10 Months Old

It’s hard to believe my baby is already ten months old. Then again, I probably say that every month. It seems like it’s gone by so much faster with Phaedra than it did with Eleanor.

Phaedra just cut her second tooth last Saturday after over a month of having sore, swollen gums. I guess I can’t call her Snaggletooth anymore. I can’t say fun things like, “Brush your tooth,” or “Something she can really sink her tooth into.” Ahh well.

She crawls very quickly, pulls up and walks along things, and she even stands all by herself sometimes. She’s more likely to stand on her own when she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. She is a climber. She climbs onto the bricks in front of our fireplaces. She climbs onto Eleanor’s stools. She tries to climb into or out of the bathtub. She can squirm out of her booster seat if she gets bored at mealtime and has often spooked me by almost climbing out onto the tray.

About two weeks ago, she discovered the joy of clapping. She loves to clap, and loves it even more when others join in the fun. That’s a sure way to get a smile out of her.

She has started dancing. If she hears music, even from a toy, she’ll wiggle her little body around, doing a little bee-bop.

She loves when Daddy comes home. She loves when I come home, too, but I’m rarely away from her. She knows the sound of the garage door opening, and she’ll crawl over to the door as fast as she can when she hears it. If she doesn’t happen to hear it, she crawls to her daddy the second she sees him. If she hears his voice before she sees him, she is ecstatic upon hearing it. She’ll start flapping her arms in excitement like she’s trying to take flight. She claps her hands and reaches for her daddy. If he doesn’t pick her up immediately, she gets really mad. This happens often since Grant tries to wash his hands after a day of work before touching the kids.

She is so sweet. She snuggles me when I get her out of her bed after a nap. She takes advantage of any time I doze off while nursing her in bed. She loves a chance to sleep close to Mommy and Daddy. She loves her sister, too, but she shows that love by following her around the house and trying to get her hands on any toys Eleanor has touched.

Phaedra loves her sister, but I really think she enjoys tormenting her. She knows just how to get her goat, and she goes for it. Eleanor makes it too easy, though; always the victim. Eleanor will sit and watch as Phaedra will take a toy out of Eleanor’s lap, and then she’ll cry about it. I keep telling her if she doesn’t want Phaedra to have something, she needs to move it away when Phaedra comes. But instead, Eleanor freezes (in panic? in indignation?) as Phaedra easily confiscates Eleanor’s treasure. Then Eleanor cries or complains to me. At least they aren’t violent.

Phaedra has a definite eye for trouble. The girl is amazing in how quickly she finds it. She can easily scope out paper, napkins or tissues (there are plenty of those since they’ve been sick), and she is really fast at chomping a bite out before I can get to her and take it away. She loves perilous positions that make me go running to rescue or at least spot her. She likes cords, toys that are choking hazards, and sticking her fingers into small holes. She especially likes the cord to Grant's Macbook that he leaves plugged in all the time, and if the Macbook is actually hooked up to it, she can easily remove the cord (thanks a lot, Macintrash!). Just today, I finally got the courage to stick my tongue on it to see if she's actually getting zapped when she does it. Ouch! How can she like that?! She loves to remove the covers on our heating vents so she can fall in or just peruse the small bits of junk down there for her dining pleasure. She eats anything she finds on the floor. I always know when she’s hungry, because that’s the one time she’s particular enough to only scavenge in the kitchen and dining room. (Disclaimer: Although she loves to do these things, I actually do catch her in time to stop her most of the time. It's not like I'm not there. She's just quick at finding more trouble.)

She loves technology, but I think it just goes back to her knack for trouble. She knows she isn’t supposed to play with remotes, computers, and phones, so she wants them even more. Our phones are borderline, because we often give in and let her gnaw on them for a while. They aren’t very good phones anyway. This can be problematic when I actually try to make a call and she is clambering up me to try to get her favorite toy from me that she must have right that very moment. Sometimes, her squawking at me makes the phone call so difficult that I put the phone on speaker and just hand it to her so I can talk in peace. But then, she hears her daddy’s voice coming from it. She beams at me at first, but then I can tell she’s trying to figure out a way to bust her daddy out of that tiny little prison she holds in her hands (and mouth).

She is impossible to dress or change a diaper because she is such a wiggly little escape artist.

Phaedra became a bit more difficult to feed this month, probably mostly due to the teething. She decided it would be a fun challenge for Mommy if every time the spoon came toward her face, she flapped both arms wildly at it. Fun. Messy. She doesn’t seem to do it quite as much now that the tooth has cut through except to clue me in that she wants something else, such as finger foods or a drink. She also shakes her head at me to really drive the message home when I’m not catching on to the fact that she’s done eating.

Besides crying, I just love every little sound that comes out of that girl’s mouth. I wish I could collect her various babbles in a jar to save for a future day when I can take them out, listen to them, and carefully place them back in the jar. Each little sound makes me happy inside.

She started out with ma-ma-ma-ma, and then added some da-da-da-da, but I don’t know if she ever associated the sounds with the person. Now, the closest she comes to saying other words are two of the things she loves most: dog and bath. When we are around dogs, she often makes the “gee” sound at the end of the word doggie. She has done this for quite a while; at first, I wasn’t sure if it was a fluke. Lately, she even babbles “gog” around a dog.

She gets so excited about a bath. She’ll go into the bathroom that has the tub, pull up to the side of the tub, pat the tub, grin at me, pat the tub, bounce up and down. I ask her, “Do you want a bath?” I try to emphasize the word bath. I egg her on a little more, and pretty soon, she’s babbling, “Ba ba bap,” at me (the p sound is really soft, more like she just ends the ba sound abruptly). She practically jumps out of her skin with glee when I start the water.

This really is going by too quickly for me. I wish she could grow up just a little slower. She is so sweet, so innocent, so little. Her pudgy little forearm is the length of the palm of my hand, and soon that will just be a memory. How blessed I feel to be able to be making these memories. I’m sad to see my baby grow up, but I also can’t wait to see who she will become.