11 Months!

It's incredibly hard to believe, but Lydia is already 11 months old!

As I was rocking with her before bed tonight, I couldn't help but remember where we were exactly one year ago: the hospital.  We made a very hasty trip to the emergency room in the wee hours of the morning!  It was five weeks before her actual due date of January 5, but thankfully the contractions stopped fairly quickly and we were able to last another month.  When I look back at my pregnancy with Lydia, I am still so amazed at how wonderful everything turned out.  God is so powerful!

Anyway...

This giggly, wiggly munchkin is SO full of life and energy!  We're guessing she's somewhere between 22-23 pounds yet, but we're starting to wonder at the accuracy of our bathroom scale!  Her rate of gain seems to have finally slowed down somewhat this month!  As far as a schedule goes, it's not set in stone, but she still takes two naps per day that vary in length.  I may jinx myself, but she's actually started to sleep in until the 7:00 hour more often than not!  Yahoo!  This pushes naps and so back a bit, and so bedtime has gotten closer to 9:00 pm.

One of our biggest accomplishments this month has finally been in the eating department!  About a week and a half ago, Lydia finally decided to stop gagging on real table food.  She has successfully eaten bread, toast, grilled cheese, pancake, muffin, peas, carrots, beans, peaches, pears, and bananas.  One day she will love a food and the next day absolutely refuse it, but she will never refuse bread! (Must be my child...!)   Lydia doesn't eat quite enough table food to get full, so we're still doing some baby food to finish meals.   She doesn't seem to like the feeling of sticky/slimy things because she won't feed anything to herself except for bread, but we're taking baby steps!

Speaking of baby steps, Lydia is starting to get very brave and take a few steps all by herself!  She loves to practice walking with her walker, along furniture, with your hands, or just between two people.  We've seen her successfully take about eight steps before getting a little tipsy!  It won't be long before she just takes off!  Probably just in time for the Christmas tree to be up!

Lydia has also started to do the signs for "more" and "all done," she finally does "so big," and she loves to give kisses as long as you don't have to much facial hair...right Grandpa Moss? ;)  She is starting to copy a lot of words/sounds that she hears, and we frequently hear her say the words hi, yeah, mama, dada, and aboo (peekaboo).  I'm not convinced she has them fully connected to what they mean yet, but she definitely is starting to understand more of what we're saying.

Lydia is finally over her fear of the town's 6:00 siren and now loves to listen for our hourly chime clock.  She still loves peekaboo, reading books, dancing to music, emptying the Tupperware cupboard multiple times per day, bathtime, and tackling Daddy.  She doesn't have too many dislikes, except for the random choices on food.  Lydia still doesn't care for juice and isn't too fond of getting bundled up for this cold weather or riding in the car at nighttime.  

We love you SO much, sweetheart!  You are such a joy in our lives.  We absolutely love your giggles, silly faces, and snuggles!  We are so thankful to be your Mommy and Daddy!