Julia at 10 months

Julia is growing up so fast. She is past 10 months now, and into the home stretch heading for one year old! She's doing a few new things since last month, though not too much. I think her biggest accomplishment is pulling herself up to stand. She probably started doing this around 9 mos, but now she does it all the time, and I think she will be cruising along the furniture soon. She has also turned into a very fast crawler. She and Sam get a kick out of chasing each other around the house; Sam hollers, "Julia, follow ME!" and off they go. :) She's getting more interested in solid food; her favorites so far are still yogurt and applesauce. She also eats some of the Gerber puffs on occasion, and today I found her gnawing on one of Sam's animal crackers.

Her teeth are taking their time about coming through. A few weeks ago, I could both see and feel the edge of one of her bottom front teeth, but then it disappeared again. The last couple days it has reappeared, and I think it may actually be coming through this time. She has been a little fussier than usual for the past few weeks, which I'm assuming is due to the teething pain. She hasn't been sleeping so well at night lately either . . . probably for the same reason. She usually takes one good nap a day, sometimes two. I'm still carrying her around in the Ergo a lot, which is a good way to get her to conk out if she's fighting sleep. Now that she's so mobile, she also entertains herself a lot better, which is really nice. She loves being able to crawl around and get toys for herself. Her vocabulary is still limited to "Mama" and "Dada," although Jim also taught her to say "banana" recently--she was saying something that sounded kind of like banana, so he worked with her and after a few tries it really sounded like she said it! Pretty funny, since she's never even tasted a banana yet. :) Another new thing is clapping. She gets this big grin and claps her hands just for the fun of it. She also will "give you five" if you ask her to--or at least Jim can get her to do this. I haven't succeeded at that one yet. Can you tell she's definitely a daddy's girl?! :)

We have been working on teaching her the word "no" and I think she is catching on a lot quicker than Sam did. I've been letting her play in some of the kitchen cabinets but I'm hoping Jim is able to make doors for them soon! It would be fine if she could just have one cabinet with stuff she can play with . . . but it's kind of hard to explain that to her when they are all open and she can reach everything in them.

I don't know what her height and weight are right now, since she doesn't have another checkup till April or May, and I haven't gotten around to trying to measure her myself. She is still petite, but chubby!! I'm guessing she is probably right around 20 lbs. But still very bald, as you can tell from the pictures. :) That's OK--I know she will grow some hair eventually, and I'm hoping for some soft little curls, but we will see.

Just like Sam, she is a ton of fun and we are so thankful to have her sunshiney presence in our lives!!