10-month update: crawling, kitty cat + the black hole
Posted by laralynnian on 02 Apr 2008 at 09:28 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Our little girl is now a pro-crawler and into everything. She often does a loop that includes her favorite destinations: the bathroom shelves (she pulls up on them to find her bath toys), then a short jaunt over to the scale where she attempts to weigh herself, and finally a trip through the bedroom door and around the corner to our nightstand, where she knocks books off the center shelf then reaches over to grab the phone from the receiver. She’ll hang out here for a good while, pushing buttons and flipping through or eating books. If she’s lucky, the cat will join her, or maybe her brother. She gets giddy at the sight of either one.
At just over nine months, Meli started saying her first real words (meaning those that are obviously connected to things). “Cat” was in the making for a couple months, but she now says it (minus a full “t” sound) spontaneously when she sees Thor. She also gets pretty upset when he runs away and slinks into small spaces before she has a chance to pat – or pull – his fur. Her other consistent word is “bye bye,” complete with a hand wave, though the sound is a little closer to “ba ba.” She says “hi da” quite a bit, but to me this still seems just a happy sound. Joey disagrees and says she’s specifically talking to him (even if he’s nowhere to be found).
Melina eats like her stomach is a black hole. Cantalope and watermelon, turkey and chicken and a taste of Easter ham, grilled cheese sandwiches, pasta, pinto beans, pancakes, eggs… pretty much all finger food from our table, save yogurt for breakfast and some pureed veggies to get the greens down. She now picks up and drinks from her sippy cup all on her own. This self-sufficiency is a good thing, seeing as she expresses her likes, dislikes, and desires more than ever. She’ll squawk up a storm if she has nothing but cheese on her tray and really wants a piece of that melon I’m eating. She also screams when her brother steals her toys. One day soon, she’ll get even.
She’s able to pull herself up on furniture and stand with one hand holding on, but hasn’t started cruising just yet. I think she’s too busy taking in the new view from up there. She’s able to stand without any support for a good 5-10 seconds before wobbling around and crashing down to her butt.
She’s still a social butterfly, and when out at a restaurant is usually more interested in flirting with the people at the next table than her own family. But she does have boundaries: She’s only comfortable with strangers if we (or someone else she knows well) are close.