10 Months

Claire is 10-months-old today! These pictures were taken this morning in our backyard. Claire is definitely a morning person. She wakes up happy everyday.

Month nine was a very big month for our little girl. She got her ears pierced. She traveled to Tulsa and Memphis. PopPop and MiMi came to visit, and she went to Rodeo and the park.

She has some mad skills. She can now curl her tongue, throw a ball, roll a ball, brush her own hair (or at least attempt this); and she can feed herself. She can recognize patterns and is beginning to learn her colors. (She can hand you a red ball or a blue ball or an orange ball on request.)

She is babbling almost non-stop when she is awake. She clicks her tongue a lot. In addition to "DaDa," "Mama" and "bye-bye," she now says "hi" and "bear." "Bye-bye" is a general greeting for her, similar to "aloha." She says "bye-bye" for hello, goodbye and sometimes just because. She usually waves one or both hands when saying "bye-bye." She has recently started waving at everyone she meets everywhere we go. For example, while riding in the cart at the grocery store, she will wave and say "bye-bye" as we go up and down the aisles. It's almost as if she were the queen on parade!

Claire is 27" long. She is wearing 9-month and 12-month clothes (depending on the brand and outfit) and size 2 shoes.

Food is big thing around our house these days. We have reintroduced bananas, turkey, apple sauce and Gerber Puffs. Claire loves them all. She has tried some new foods as well: Baby Mum-Mums, cinnamon raisin granola, apples with pomegranate juice, cinnamon raisins & pears, butternut squash with corn, pasta vegetable medley and hearty vegetable stew - all of which she loves. She also tried spaghetti-o's and maccaroni and cheese. So far she's not a fan of pasta, but she will eat a few bites if we force her to do so. Mashed potatoes, however, make her gag. Her body just will not accept them. We also tried giving her apple pie (a flavor of baby food, not the real thing), and she hated it.

As mentioned, Claire is now feeding herself. Here is a short video of the very first time Claire fed herself. She's eating banana-flavored Gerber Puffs.

Happy 10 months, Baby Girl!