Author: Jessica Dickerson

You guys. I can’t even tell you how freaking adorable Heather is. And I feel horrible that I’ve done such a rotten job of sharing her charms with the world. Fortunately Kyle has put up a couple of videos in the last several months. All I’ve got are a few not-very-good pics from my phone.

This is right after Heather discovered her belly button. She has to pull her huge pot belly out of the way to get to it.

 

Believe it or not, Heather is 11 months old. I can’t believe how fast time has gone by, nor how big she is! Here’s what she’s been figuring out these last two months:

She can clap, which she loves. (Though what she loves even more is to grab my hands and make me clap.) She’s recently learned to wave, though it usually looks more like a “come here” gesture than a wave. Sometimes she’ll flap her whole arm, though, and it’s clearly a wave.

Some of her favorite toys are her books. She’ll sit and pull her board books out of the bin and turn the pages and stare at the pictures. She loves to turn the pages, so her favorite books are the fatter ones that she can just keep going and going with.

She’s getting much better about playing by herself, and it’s wonderful, but every once in a while, she’ll crawl over to where we are and start grumping and generally making a nuisance of herself until one of us realizes she has a poopy diaper. It’s hilarious.

My very favorite development is that she has become a snuggly baby! She never has been, but now she’ll crawl up to me or Kyle and lay her head down on us for a few seconds. Especially if I’ve been kissing and squeezing her, she’ll snuggle me back. Then she’s usually off again, but it’s so adorable. She loves us!

Heather doesn’t do this very often, but every once in a while, she’ll sing along when I’m singing her lullabies to her. It’s just this tuneless “aaaAAaaaaaaAAAaaa…” but it’s awesome.

My baby girl is turning into a monkey. She’s climbed up onto her exersaucer multiple times, and she’ll stand on anything if it gives her a few more inches of height so she can reach more stuff. And no matter what she’s standing against (couch, tv stand, chair, whatever), she’s lifting her legs and pulling with her arms to try and climb up.

She’s gradually moving into the stage where she is not only destructive—she’s also constructive! We’ve taught her to put her bath toys back in their bag, and she’s experimenting with stacking blocks and the like, which is so fun to see.

Lastly, our sweet little girl has adoring fans wherever she goes. At church, she entertains the people behind us, for several rows back. Cashiers at the grocery store find her adorable, and all the employees at the LoveSac store in the mall are completely charmed by her growls. Complete strangers tell us that she’s adorable, and all we can do is agree with them. We have such fun with her, and we love her so much!

And now for a couple of videos. Kyle’s attacking her with the tickle plane in the first one. Usually she gets more excited than this, but she gives a couple of laughs.

In this video, Heather’s just kind of doing her thing. Enjoy!

Okay, I’ve decided to skip the 10-month writeup. I’ll include stuff in the 11-month post, which should be up in a few days. But in the meantime, here are some pictures of Heather at around 10 months:

1. At her 9-month checkup, Heather was 2′ 4.5″ (80.63%) and 16 lb 8.9 oz (12.26%). We are very pleased that she is growing and chunking up a bit (relatively, y’know).

2. I am the worst mom in the world, so Heather climbed out of the bath tub last night (yes, I had walked away) and fell on her head on the tile floor. Fortunately, she’s fine. I, however, suck.

Heather:

• LOVES taking baths.
• LOVES to look at new things and people.
• HATES when I leave the room. (Sometimes, she hates when I am out of reach. Many of our afternoons are spent with us trying to figure out how I can hold her tight while she crawls around and plays. Obviously, this is impossible, but it seems to be what she would really like.)

• LOVES the VeggieTales opening song. I use it to distract her while I trim her nails!
• LOVES shiny balloons.
• HATES those few seconds between when she realizes I’m going to nurse her and when the nipple actually enters her mouth.

• LOVES eating Cheerios.
• LOVES chewing on things. Sometimes, she’ll grab your finger and shove it in her mouth—right back along the side, not in front— to chew on.
• HATES loud, sudden noises. Also running bathwater or the blender or vacuum. And sirens up close scare the living daylights out of her.

• LOVES playing with hair—mine, Kyle’s, whatever.
• LOVES pulling over the recycling bag and playing with whatever she can find inside.
• LOVES little flashing lights, like on computers.
• HATES story time. (I really, really hope this is temporary. She has always loved it! But she currently seems to greatly prefer our books to library books, which make her squirm and thrash and cry. Strange.)

• LOVES pulling books off bookshelves (or out of boxes).
• LOVES getting vitamins—or anything from a dropper, really. She gets iron twice a day, and a tri-vitamin and fluoride once a day. She loves them all. (In good news, I’ve been able to stop giving her gas drops, though she loved those, too.)
• HATES going to sleep.
• LOVES being held (unless you’re trying to get her to sleep, of course). She’ll crawl a long ways to get you to pick her up. (And then she’ll hoist her armpits at you until you do!)

• LOVES being tossed in the air/held upside-down.
• HATES having her face washed.
• LOVES making noise.
• LOVES squeaking her fingers down the pages of her board books.
• LOVES when Daddy comes home.

It’s getting rather difficult to get candid shots of her; as soon as she sees the camera, she bolts for it:

And a sleep update: Heather’s getting pretty good at staying asleep/soothing herself back to sleep if she wakes up, but she’s also started fighting the initial put-down pretty hard. We’re down to one nap a day, which is insane, but seems to be working alright for us. She’s getting enough total sleep (she usually sleeps 12-13 hours at night, so a one- or two-hour nap is okay, according to her pediatrician), but the stretch between the nap and bedtime gets kind of long some days, and she grumps.

Heather is growing and learning so quickly these days! We have a lot of fun with her, and we love her very much.