Eliza at 10 Months

Three weeks ago, during the height of blog transfer madness, Eliza's age reached double digits. Ten months old sound really close to a whole year. Wow!

This month was packed with excitement for Eliza! She is quite a different girl than she was a month ago. Over Christmas break, she started standing up in bed. At first this was exciting, but then it became a little bit of a problem. Eliza was enjoying her new-found ability so much that she refused to take naps. She would just stand in her crib, rather than lay down to sleep. I started nursing her to sleep, so that she would stay laying down.

Though standing has become less of a novelty, napping has not improved much. When we returned home after our visit to Ohio, Eliza would not (and still won't) take a nap longer than about 25 minutes. Some days she only takes one nap. On a good day she'll take two. If she's feeling really charitable (and we guess just the right times to put her down), she'll squeeze in a third little napcito. Sometimes it takes an hour for her to get to sleep for her nap that lasts only half of that. Fortunately, nighttime napping goes pretty well. Lately she has just been waking up twice to nurse during the night.

(This isn't her normal napping attire. She fell asleep on the way home from church and we made a successful transfer to the crib. This is her waking up.)

The food department has probably been where Eliza has had the most firsts this month. She's tried lots of new, grown-up foods. She likes most everything the first time, though sometimes it takes a second or third offering before she's completely convinced. The first time we gave her chicken, we put it through the baby food mill to grind it up. She was completely grossed out and wouldn't have it after many tries and with many other mix-ins. Then one day, I gave her a small piece of shredded chicken from my plate and she gobbled it up with no problem!

She still isn't convinced that the liquid that comes out of the sippy cup is for swallowing, not for playing in. I think she gets some water down though.

Bath time is still the highlight of the nightly routine.

This is Eliza's suspicious face.

Along with pulling herself up in her crib, Eliza also pulls herself up on furniture and walks around. She loves to walk holding onto our hands. Once, she managed to stand for a second and a half on her own before falling. Eliza loves to explore. She crawls under furniture and into crevices where she barely fits. She loves a challenge. When we are on the floor with her, she loves to crawl over us and dive off.

Eliza is so much fun!