Sophia is 11 Months Old!

The above pictures were from one of our beautiful evenings outside last week. I confess I didn't have an opportunity to do a nice, little, photo shoot on Saturday when she turned 11 months. Sophie's had a runny nose for days now and Saturday was just red-chapped-nose day for her.

It's been an exciting month for Sophie (and us!) with lots of fun new developments in her life.

First of all appearances: her hair continues to grow, though it's much finer/thinner than Will's (like mine). It's so funny how it's stick straight on top but curls in the back by her neck. Will's actually did that too, though. My mom thinks her eyes are looking more brown lately. I go back and forth on my opinion. She still has that chunk of brown on her right eye, but usually they look blue to me. Casey mentioned in a comment here that she looked like my mom in one picture and, since then, I've really noticed that too! I'm also seeing a lot more of Craig in her these days, though she still mostly resembles me.

Sophie continues to explore and crawl all over the place. She is SO FAST! I've never felt so grateful for a mostly-childproofed house and lots of doors that corral her into safe play areas when I'm busy. Her latest jungle gym is the dining room table where she can climb over, under and around the table legs and bottoms of the chairs.

And yet, she hasn't lost her affection for our ancient coffee table with it's exciting tunnel, sliding-door and hidden storage properties. Such fun.

Sophie has lots of new talents/developments! One big one is waving. It's soooo cute! She loves waving hi and bye bye to "the baby in the mirror" or to other people as long as she's not on the spot. She has a couple different waves. The picture below is an example of one - the standard, jiggly hand-flapping. The other is where her shoulder-to-elbow is in line with her shoulder and her elbow-to-hand is hanging down with her palm facing back like she's doing a robot dance. :) Then she sort of pumps her hand front and back - it's hilarious! So she's waving a lot more often and on request these days.

Another new one is dancing! Sophie loves to dance when we sing or when the fridge farm plays music. She sort of moves her torso (or sometimes just her head) side to side. Sometimes I won't even notice that music is playing somewhere until she looks at me with a grin and starts dancing. She uses this as a stall tactic at bedtime too when I sing or turn on her windy music toy. This weekend we turned on the top 40 countdown on the radio and danced around the living room with Will. The kids loved it.

Here's a couple more snaps of outdoor play. She was laying on my legs with the sky as her backdrop. I think this was St. Patrick's Day.

The talent list continues with her new ability to play and actually participate in peek-a-boo now. She lifts a bath towel/blanket/burp cloth over her face until I say "where's Sophie?" Then she pulls it down with a big smile and repeats. I don't have any good pictures of this (though I tried!) but she loves this game.

This was our attempted photo on the glider chair. Agh! The girl won't sit still! I didn't get any real stand-out pictures, but I caught a bunch today that capture her latest interests.

"No, mom, put the camera away. I want to get down."

One of her favorite books is the owl puppet book "In My Tree".

I just can't decide! In this picture I see a mixture of Craig, my mom and myself.

Sleep update - Sophie has mostly dropped her evening catnap. She still sometimes needs one if she wakes early from her afternoon nap, but often she doesn't and then is really ready for bed sooner now. It's hard to believe she can be ready to go to bed for the night so early, but she is usually in bed by 7 or 7:15 now and has a couple times conked out at 6:45 even! Then she sleeps until about 7 the next morning plus takes two (1-2 hour) naps during the day. When I lay her down she immediately rolls to her side (usually her right side) and goes to sleep, often sucking her thumb.

Pretty sure you're all up to date with Sophie's newest foods. She didn't really care for the asparagus or pineapple last week, but she ate the kiwi and loved the pumpkin-apple-oatmeal that Auny Casey suggested. Good one Case!

Sophie has become just a tad more picky about meat. She's really only had chicken and turkey so far but she loves the lentils and we're making up for protein and iron with whole grains and dairy, like cottage cheese. Pretty soon, we'll introduce beef and pork too.

Another new, fun game for Sophie is getting tickled. She's liked being tickled for awhile now - especially under her arms and neck. But now when she lays on the changing table, she'll bravely lift her arms above her head for me to tickle her and then jerk them down and laugh and giggle when I start to tickle her. Then when I pause, she slowly raises her arms again. Like with most kids, the anticipation of it is the biggest part so she'll smile and laugh even when I just pretend I'm going to tickle her. One thing I remember as a kid is that the anticipation (and sometimes chasing around) part was fun, but I didn't really enjoy being held down and tickled against my will, so I'm always careful to just do it for a short time and watch her reaction. It's not fun anymore if the kid feels tortured.

I know I've talked in several previous posts about the sweet relationship between Sophie and Will. Here are a couple more quick snaps I wanted to share. You can't see Will in this first one but he was still at the table finishing his lunch and he was talking to Sophie and trying to engage her in babbles. He was saying "Hi baby!" or "Hi Sophia!" all high-pitch again. She loves it and smiles and squeals back.

Some of her most frequent babbles include: nana, go, gop, mama, mom and gaga. I love the long "o" sound best 'cause she purses her lips and makes a real exaggerated "o" with her mouth. So cute. Oh! And one more new thing that happened just today: Sophie signed "all done". This may not seem all that significant because I'm sure many babies do this much sooner than 11 months, but I very rarely work with her on it. We've done it a few times and Will likes to reinforce it with her at the table, but it's not really something we practice. Today when she finished nursing and started babbling to me, I asked her "are you all done?" She immediately started twisting her wrists to do the sign! I thought that was so cute.

She also loves to climb and nag him - here she's trying to pull his bib off - while he's at the table if she finishes earlier than him.

The push toy hasn't gotten quite as much love lately. But every now and then she'll get up and walk with it.

I'm actually pretty surprised she hasn't gone further with her mobile skills at this point. When she started scooting, crawling and pulling up so early (and so determined!) I really thought she'd be walking or at least standing alone by now. But it seems she feels she's sufficiently mobile for now and hasn't shown real interest in walking. She does, however, love to "practice standing" with me where I'll let go and then catch her quick when she starts to fall. She thinks that's so funny.

And finally, here's a picture of her new sitting position: the hurdler. She does this in the bath tub and often when she's playing too. I don't know why, but it cracks me up!

So another month has flown by and now we have just a few weeks left before Sophia turns ONE! I can't believe it and I'm not sure I'm ready... but I just love her like crazy and know that the toddler years will be just as much fun. Love you baby girl!