11 Months!

Our little Ceci is 11 months old today!

At 11 months Ceci is...

Growing like a weed.  Based on our own measurements she's almost 31 inches from heel to head!  Remarkably though, she's not really gaining weight, she's been hovering just above 20 pounds for over a month now.  This is likely because she's so crazy active all the time!  The HV isn't too concerned because she's eating a ton and has a lot of energy and also looks healthy, but we're keeping an eye on it.

9 Months

11 Months - Getting so tall!

Eating A TON.  Ceci still eats basically like a growing teenage boy, haha.   She eats pretty much whatever we're having and there's hardly anything she won't eat.  Current favorites are clementines, grapes, grilled cheese, yogurt, oat bars, mini muffins, and cheese.

Demolishing berries and cheerios

Lovely 'Mothering Sunday' lunch

Enjoying lunch at home on the patio

Nursing 3-5 times a day.  Most days it's still 4 times - wake-up, after both naps, and before bed - but occasionally if we're out and about or one of her naps is later than usual, she'll skip one.  And occasionally she'll wake-up in the middle of the night and want to eat so I oblige.  Especially given her lack of weight gain.  If she's hungry, I feed her :)

Sleeping relatively well. Some nights she sleeps straight through, usually from about 7:30pm-7am.  Other nights she wakes once around 10pm or so and just needs a quick pat on her bum to settle back to sleep.  Then there are rough nights, when she wakes up somewhere in the wee hours and stays awake for 1.5-2.5hrs.  On these occasions, when we try patting her in her crib she either cries or just keeps trying to stand up.  If we leave her on her own she stands up and gets hysterical.  So we end up doing a combination of standing up and rocking her, feeding her, and laying down with her either on us or next to us.  She seems to prefer laying next to us on the bed but even then she's restless - she tries to fall asleep but tosses and turns like she can't get comfortable.  We think it might be her teeth (or more recently her runny nose, possibly also teething-related) and giving her some ibuprofen usually eventually helps, but mostly we just grin and bear it.  I always feel so bad for her because you can tell she's really trying to fall asleep but just can't completely relax - I think that's why she wants us there, for a little comfort when she can't get comfortable.  Poor thing.  And poor us, haha.  Hopefully this will work itself out soon!

Napping IN HER CRIB.  That's right, folks, the girl who would only nap on another human is now napping in her crib, in her room, all by herself.  There will be a whole post on this long and slightly miraculous journey soon.

Notice the daylight - this is a nap!  And I'm downstairs! Life. Changing.

SO interactive and learning all the time.  She mimics us constantly and is finally saying Mum!  (More like mumumumum but close enough!)  She waves hi and bye consistently (and uses her fingers rather than just twirling her wrist), makes something akin to a kissing noise by smacking her lips, points at things she wants, does some motions with her hands when we sing "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider", tries to brush hair and teeth, is making very impressive attempts at using utensils all by herself (she knows what she's supposed to do, she just can't quite get the food on the fork/spoon, but she's SO close, and if we help a little she does the rest).

Brushing Daddy's hair

Brushing teeth with mom

Talking to Daddy on the phone

Obsessed with her ball pool (a huge thank you to the Balls family for passing it on to us when they moved back to the UK!).  She can climb in and out of it and just absolutely loves playing in it.

A total climber (perhaps a future gymnast?)!  She loves to climbs stairs, on people, on cushions she throws off the couch, in and out of the pool at swimming, and even up onto the couch.  She's quite a little monkey!

Holding on to the edge all by herself!

"Climbing"

Loves swimmimg. She's making good progress too, even though we missed half the sessions this term because we were in America. Looking forward to the Spring term!

The next class I let go and she swam like this on her own for a couple minutes!

Still in love with books.  Board books still remain her favorite toy (she also loves books with real pages but they get torn much too quickly!).  She'll happily sit on her own flipping through the pages and talking to herself, almost like she's reading the story.  It's adorable and I hope this love affair with books is a life-long thing!

Reading her owl book from Auntie Janie 

Loves music.  She finds it hysterical if we put music on and dance, and especially funny if we pick her up and dance with her.  She's also started shaking her little hips when there's music playing.  She also loves anything that makes noise when she shakes or bangs it.  And a new favorite pastime is playing my keyboard - she crawls up to it, pulls herself up to stand and starts banging away on the keys with a huge smile on her face.

Ceci is our smart, determined, energetic, hilarious, spirited, persistent and loving little girl and we absolutely love her to pieces.

As per usual, here are our favorite outtakes and alternates from our 11 month photo shoot:

And here's Ceci's 11 month video!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbWYEgwU4vI)