Little Miss Independent or 11 months

Of course, every day something happens and I tell myself that I should make sure to mention it in my blog... Of course, every time I start writing a post for the life of me I cannot remember most of those things. Oh, well... Here we go.

Our little-little precious darling baby girl just turned 11 months last week! In less than a month we'll be celebrating her first birthday! At one of the Gymboree classes during the parent sharing time we were asked what has been the biggest surprise in our parenting experiences. While almost every day contains little wonderful surprises, I think the biggest surprise is how quickly Sophia grows and changes! I know it's no rocket science, but I hadn't thought about it before: how much a baby needs to learn during the first year of life! It's just amazing!

Anyway, I should stop stating the obvious and start recollecting the moments I wanted write down.

1mo:

11mo:

If I needed to come up with the theme of the month it would be "Independence and Freedom". Sophia's been showing quite a free spirit reacting strongly to any attempts to limit her freedom. She loves exploring, watching, trying new things, but she hates it when somebody tries to help her by moving her hands instead of just showing. She'll wash her hands under the running water, but will try to not let you do much with them. She'll eat her cereal with a spoon and let you fill up the spoon, but won't tolerate you touching the spoon when she brings it to her mouth. She'll let you pick up a piece of fruit of veggie that might be too slippery on the tray, but she won't let you put it in her mouth, she'll have to take it on her own. The list goes on and on...

It is combined in a very interesting way with how much exclusive attention and quality time she needs and likes and how snugly she can be ( I just love the little hugs that she gives Kyle and me! It melts my heart!!). On this picture one of her bears got lucky:

Sophia used to love her jumperoo (notice all the stuff that we had to put under her feet in order for her to stand on the lowest setting!):

She still does love it, but in a different way:

Another common theme in this house is the discovering of the kitchen cabinets and drawers... Did I say kitchen? I meant all the cabinets and drawers that are within the reach of the little curious hands. Whenever you feel that your pots, measuring cups, bowls (basically anything unbreakable and not sharp) are not arranged properly or your house is lacking a certain charm that can be added by various plastic bags, socks, books and magazines laying in random places, please, feel free to invite us over and our brave designer, passionate about experimenting, will give your home a refreshed look! :)

Socks... I don't know what is so fascinating about socks, but Sophia loves all types of socks. She can spend a long time going through our drawers with socks, moving them back and forth, looking, sometimes chewing :) Whenever we take off her socks, she grabs them and holds them in her hand wherever she goes. If you gain a special favor you might be awarded with the honor of holding one of her socks for a little while.

Food... It's been as interesting as ever. Sophia's discovering all sorts of food, but I can't help mentioning her love for the pickled asparagus and pickles! The faces she made when first trying them were just precious. But she's fallen in love with these treats! In fact, she'll eat anything as long as you alternate it with pickles... or cheese (she loves it!). 

Our big girl is almost ready to walk. In fact she walks all around just holding onto one of my fingers. As soon as she gains enough confidence, she'll take off and there will be no stopping. I think that switching to the new level at the Gymboree class for children between 10 and 16 months is encouraging her to want to start walking, since most of the toddlers in the class are running around on their own.

Sophia's been talking a lot lately. In her own language, of course. I'm guessing the mix of Russian and English that she's hearing can get confusing. :) She's saying a few short words except for dah-dah and ma-ma that we can understand or guess what they are... but in any case she's usually very vocal and clear about her feelings and wishes.

She's started waving "hi" and "good-bye" again. She used to wave "bye" to Kyle when we was leaving for work at 8mo, but she wasn't interested in it for a while. These days she waves to a lot of people when they are saying "hi" or "bye" to her. If she feels like it, of course.

One of Sophia's favorite games is peekaboo. She wasn't a big fan of it when she was younger, but 3-4 months ago she's figured it out and has been loving it ever since. In fact, her favorite thing to do is take a blanket and cover up her face and wait till we start asking "where's Sophia? where's our baby girl?". She'll wait a second or two and then will take it off with a most excited and happy look!

Well, I'm sure I'm missing something, but my sweet honey has got me a cup of tea and I would like to proceed to having it. This post is getting pretty long anyway.

Bye! :)

A quick update

I haven't been in the blogging mood lately. I'm not sure if it is going to come back any time soon, so I guess I should make a quick update on our baby girl.

She's been super active (has she ever been not very active?) and she's been able to get around very quickly. I know we all go through the same experience, but it amazes me how exciting it must be to be able to go anywhere you want to go after having to depend on other people for it for 8 months. And Sophia is EXCITED! You should hear her high pitch squeaks when she crawls closer to a cat. She hasn't quite figured out that scaring the cats with loud noises is not going to get her a very good quality time with the pets. She's paying close attention to us saying "be gentle" and showing her how to pet the kitties, but half a minute later she succumbs to the temptation and grabs a tail or whiskers. It has surprised me how patient our kitty-cats have been with our little one. I guess they've adopted her as one of the care-givers too and even try get her to scratch behind their ears. Cammy will come and rub against baby's hand trying to get attention. It is super cute!

There are a few other things that entice Sophia. Even though it still rains a lot we have been able to get outside for short walks (as in baby walking in her Juppy walker) 

where she can explore all beautiful plants in full blossom! (I love this time of year for the bright yet gentle colors of the awakening nature). Whenever our curious baby girl spots something interesting, she points at it with her pointer and makes sure we see, hear and understand where to go.

Another fun thing she's been discovering is going to the park for walks. Her first time in a swing was a little scary, but now she'll try to bounce and move her legs in order to go faster!

Here's our cute heart discovering grass:

No matter what Sophia is doing when she hears me open the dishwasher, she zooms through the room. I have only about 10 to 20 seconds to grab all of the forks and knives out of the silverware basket that's attached to the bottom of the dishwasher and is located in a very "grabable" spot for the baby with a goal. My mother-in-law made a good point saying that in 12-15 years it'll be much more difficult to get her to have to do anything with the dishwasher!

Another favorite activity is laundry. Everything about laundry. She's not a big fan of the noise made by the washer, but she loves standing next to the dryer and watching me get out the clothes. She has lots of fun when I'm sorting through the laundry or putting it away. She plays with the laundry basket, gets things out and puts them back many times. She'll find anything else on the floor and come put it into the basket. She'll push it around as a walker. I think she learned to squat for the first time when holding on to the basket and trying to pull one of my sweaters through the hole near the bottom of the basket.

Organizing. We do believe that's Sophia's way to rebel. She's trying to organize everything. Give her a container and she'll put everything into it. Take it out and she'll crawl, pick it up, go up and down as many times as needed to put every single thing back into it! The other day we were sorting through piles of stuff in our office that's been working as a "spare closet" since baby's been born and she had lots of fun grabbing anything she could get a hold of and dragging it into her container!

Our little organizer doesn't miss the shelves either. She'll crawl up to a shelf with a toy, put the toy onto the shelf, pick something of the shelf, play with it or move it to a higher shelf, put it back and repeat ten times. At the end of her playing time all of the objects will still end up on the shelf!

*Note to self: If your baby is busy playing and gets very quiet, it is never a good sign, no matter how much you are enjoying the moments of peace and the chance to finish doing whatever you started. Today Sophia decided that the changing table needed to be wiped with the diaper wipes and apparently it was very, very dirty, since the neat baby girl used up the whole container while mommy was folding and putting away her clothes!

Eating. It's been a learning trial-and-error experience for all of us. It took me a while, but I learned to discern the expressions that our sweetie pie has during meal times. I had no idea there could be so many of them. At least I learned pretty quickly to recognize when she opens up her mouth for a sneeze and not rush a spoon full of cereal into it, unless I wanted to clean it off myself, Kyle and the rest of the kitchen / dinning room :) We've been trying lots of different foods. Since Sophia is getting bored with the pureed stuff we've been experimenting with textures and forms. Some of them have worked better than others. But she still loves her chicken, cheese, yogurt, puffs, apples plus carrots, small pasta, bread, celery, corn. She is OK with other foods and we are trying to offer her more types of food from our table (the ones that we think are healthy enough for her, of course. So even though she was pointing pretty clearly at it, she still got no pizza on the menu).  Of course we are NOT OK with some foods that Sophia has tried... like cat food... :))

Is this the result of "success" or "error"? :)

Who needs hair styling products anyway?

Of course, I'll have to mention how quickly our little crawler and cruiser moves between different furniture. She's getting pretty tall too! She reached Kyle's glasses that were laying on the counter in our bathroom! (Well, it's not a very tall counter, but seemed to be tall enough until now).  She'll climb up anything. I still don't understand how she learned to do it so quickly. I suspect that if she weren't so cautious, she'd be trying to walk by now.

Another very exciting event in the life of our little baby girl was the visit of her grandparents and her Dedication that happened the week after Easter. It was a very important and touching moment for all of us!

It's been a few weeks since I've started writing this "quick" update. So I better get it posted now before another "few" weeks go by.