10 months tomorrow!

Tomorrow our beautiful and happy girl will be 10 months old. I just can't believe it. She's still so freaking happy, although she is known to whine when tired or hungry. She plays pretty well in her "baby jail," which we have set up against the wall in the living room. She has even figured out how to stand up by holding on to it! She officially started crawling for real, on hands and knees (and not just scooting on her tummy) on May 25, a month after she started scooting I think. She's really getting the hang of it and doesn't let anything get in her way. She crawls over and under everything, including boxes, her musical table and her saucer, which is in the baby jail with her. She even managed to crawl under the saucer and figure out that the jail wasn't connected to the wall and got out. I was in the office and Pigpen was in the bathroom and when he came back into the LR, there she was, outside the jail, trying to push it back into place against the wall, hoping we wouldn't notice that she had escaped. :) Too cute. She loves to stand up on the couch and look out the window. She would rather play with the blinds but she pulls them off the sill and messes them up so we have taken to putting them up and she can look out the window.

That bring us to babyproofing, which we started last weekend. We got some supplies at Babies R Us and went to town. We got the magnetic latches for the cabinets but have only installed them on the entertainment center. Apparently it isn't that easy! We got something to wind up the blind cords for the windows which is good b/c she loved to grab those. We covered the electrical outlets with covers handed down from Cheryl. We put a lock on the cabinet next to the couch and took the liquor out of there. We bought a strap to hold furniture to the wall which we definitely plan to use on the bookcase in her room.

Her schedule is beautifully predictable right now. Up around 7am, eats then bottle around 8am, nap from 9-10am, bottle at 11am, solids at 12pm, nap from 2-4pm, bottle at 5pm, solids at 6pm, bottle around 7:45pm, bed at 8:30pm. It really helps my way of thinking knowing what kind of time I have to do things, in and out of the house.

It has started getting warmer so she has been sleeping a couple of nights without the sleepsack. Doesn't seem to faze her at all. She loves sleeping with her hippo blanket lovey--she cries if you don't give it to her when you put her down. She recently has started crying randomly in the middle of the night and I'm not sure if it is related to her not being able to find the lovey. Sometimes she only cries for a second and is able to go back to sleep herself without me going in, but I still wake up. Pigpen of course, usually sleeps through it.

Her eating is still good. She is better at self feeding with her fingers and practices with the puffs and now little bits of freeze dried apples. We've tried lots of different solids, jarred and from our plates. She even tried Taco Bell ground beef and seemed to like it, even with a little spice! Jenna gave her some mum mum cookies/crackers yesterday that melt in her mouth easily and she liked being able to feed herself that. I think her favorite thing to eat is a real banana--loves sharing one with Mommy and being able to bite of chunks with her teeth. It's very cute to watch. She really seems to be cautious of her first bite of solids--needs to test the bite first to make sure she likes it. She almost always takes a bite and turns her head to her left which I'm not sure why she does. Who knows.

We have introduced the sippy cup with water but the soft top one comes out really fast and she always seems to cough. We decided to try the hard top one but she just bites it. Maybe if we had done that one first, she would have tried sucking like a bottle and actually got something. We'll just keep trying!

Her favorite syllable is ba ba ba. We have noticed a bit of a rhythm or cadence to her speech these days like she is formulating gibberish sentences. She sometimes says "ma" but usually when she is whiney. We are working on saying ma ma and da da to her constantly but it doesn't seem to take. She is a little chatterbox when she is happy though!

She has started clicking with her mouth and loves seeing you click with your mouth too. She clicks her tongue in a way that I am completely unable to replicate but she doesn't care--as long as you make a similar sound! She has, in the last couple of days, started grinding her teeth again. It is painful! I also started asking her what a monkey says so she has started putting her mouth in an "o" face which is cute because it gives her a shocked look. She sure makes some funny faces.

Grandma came to DC last weekend so we got to see her! She stopped by on Sat with Carol and Sunday with her mom. We went to Panera and Cadence had some of our broccoli cheddar soup which she loves. Grandpa comes next weekend for Bread and will spend the night!

Cadence loves hanging out with Brooke who is very interactive now and sits up on her own. They sit on a blanket and pull all the toys out of the box and sit and play. It's very cute and gives me and Jenna a chance to hang out and talk.

We have some new friends recently! I went to the Fair Oaks New Moms group a few weeks ago and met a mom, Kristin L, with baby Alex who is now almost 10 weeks old. We had lunch that day and then met up again today for lunch at Jason's Deli. It is nice to hang out with a mom with a little baby. Alex just sleeps and Cadence entertains us in the high chair. Kristin goes back to work in early August but hopefully we'll get to have lunch again.

I also, upon recommendation from a Fair Oaks Mom, joined the Fairfax Corner Moms group on Meetup.com. They have lots of events and it's only $6/year. I went to my first event at the Chantilly library where they had pizza and snacks and you just let the babies hang out with other babies. We saw Ingrid and baby Isa there, who is a month older than Cadence and had fun playing with her. I'd like to have a playdate with Jenna, Ingrid and me. I think the girls would have a blast!

We're going to go see GramPam play bells on Sunday night. Hopefully Cadence will be well behaved!