Mia Update:
11 Months

So many changes for Mia! 

Walking:  She's just about walking, she takes a few steps at a time and has much better balance lately.  Still prefers to crawl when she wants to get somewhere fast, but she's taking a lot more risks with letting go and seems to have a lot more confidence that she can do it by herself. 

Eating:  She hates all baby food.  She only wants big people food and she will try anything we put on her tray.  We think she's pretty amazing with her chewing ability since she still has ZERO teeth.  Her favorites right now are crackers, pasta, cereal, Nutragrain bars, fruit cups, waffles, yogurt, and mashed potatoes.  She's also been using a sippy cup for most of her liquids and she's getting pretty good with this new method of drinking.  We still do a bottle at night before bed but that is pretty much the extent of the bottle.  We're also weaning her off formula.  She usually only has formula in the nighttime bottle and milk or juice throughout the day.

Other big girl things:  we retired the swing a week or so ago, I was sad to see it go for convenience reasons but it's great to have a huge section of our family room back!  You forget how much room those things take up until you take them down.  We've gotten out all the baby gates and have strategically put them all over the house.  She is everywhere and quicker than you think, she can get half way up the stairs before I can blink sometimes.  We'll also be switching her to forward facing in the car in a few weeks.  I'm sure she'll be happy to look at something other than the back of the seat!  We're also slowly trying to wean her off her pacifier.  This has been her best friend since birth, so we know this will be a rough road for everyone involved.  We try to keep it to nighttime and sometimes during the day, it's a habit we all need to break, it's really easy to slip one in her mouth when she's getting tired or angry. 

Hair:  her hair is growing faster than we can say barrette.  When we get it wet in the bath it is literally half way down her back.  Dave is getting really good at a single ponytail and I've moved on to piggy tails.  It's extremely hard when your subject is constantly moving their head side to side to try and see what the heck you are doing to them.  Hair was never my forte; I could barely do a regular braid on my cabbage patch kids or myself when I was growing up.  When I had gymnastics competitions growing up I just had to have a french braid (which neither my mom or I were good at), but if I held strands of hair while my mom did the braiding, we could pretty much end up with a french braid.  My goal is to someday get good enough to do a french braid on Mia without her holding half her hair.  (I realize that when she's older a french braid will be completely un-cool, but it's still my goal). 

Mom - I loved those french braid days, thanks for always doing what I wanted even though a regular pony tail would have taken a quarter of the time and effort!

Vocabulary to date:  ba (ball), ba-ba (bottle), da (dog),  dada, mama, Ta-Te (Carter), uh-oh (when she throws something across the room on purpose), and buh (book).  She has a lot of other sounds and shrieks but these are the words that actually mean something so far.

While we love the fact that Mia is getting to be such a big girl, we're somewhat sad that she's growing out of the baby stages (well, I am at least).  I will miss the days when I could put her in the swing and put in a load of laundry or take a quick shower, or when I could snuggle with her on the couch without her squirming away.  But I love this new stage where she's becoming more independent and turning into such a fun little girl!  We can't wait to celebrate your birthday in a few weeks Mia!!