10 months (belated)!


So actually, Annika is now closer to 11 months, but this will simply have to do!  Our semester started last week, and I'm teaching a new (to me) course and writing like 30 lectures, sooooo...I will update the best I can, but I promise nothing!

Annika at 10 months is, except for nighttime sleep, a joy to be around.  She is free-standing everywhere (e.g., she can stand up in the middle of the room and even clap for herself, or "dance" by doing knee bends, without falling over), can cruise with only a single hand on the couch, and is really trying to walk unassisted.  She tries a lot harder at skills than Maya did at this age, practicing them with impressive determination.  She eats very well, and we haven't had a choking incident in about a month!  She's a little picky about what she'll eat, but when she's excited about what I've given her, she goes to town!  She's even quite interested in the mechanics of spoons and forks.

Her language is doing well, although we haven't reached "explosion" stage yet.  She reliably has the following words: uh-oh, Dada, Mama, Maya (ya-ya), a really bad Abby, duck, whoo-whoo (owl), yuck, yum (mmmmmmmm!!!), hi, and bye.  Signing has been less successful, which is entirely my fault - it is just soooo much harder to sign (or a hundred other things) when you are dealing with two kids at once.  She had a super promising start to signing, but then I got busy, so we're almost starting from scratch now.  However, she definitely understands more signs than she can produce.

Our only complaint is the nighttime sleep thing.  She's sick now (all of us have a cold), but even when she's not, she just wakes sooooo often.  It's not that she doesn't know how to self soothe, because she does it every day at school, and we give her plenty of opportunity to do it at home, too - I don't mind rocking and nursing, but when that's done and she's still awake, I have to put her in her crib and go deal with the other million waiting things.  I don't even mind co-sleeping, I just want to start that part of the night at like 2 or 3am, not 15 minutes after I successfully got her to sleep in her crib.  In any case, I'm so looking forward to the point where she understands enough language that I can convince her she'd rather sleep in Maya's room than mine!!!

We still nurse a lot.  However, I've finally dropped to a single pumping session at work, and I'm counting down the days until I can HAVE MY FINAL WORK PUMPING SESSION EVER!!!!  As cute as babies are, I'm pretty sure having another one would kill me (literally), so I'm really, really glad we're done.

Things Annika loves:
- Maya
- Mama and milk
- Music
- Baths
- Putting on clothes
- Being towed to school in the sled (it's been below zero here for like three weeks now)

Things Annika hates:
- Face wiping
- Snot sucking
- Hair rinsing
- Mama unlatching her in the middle of the night - she fully senses my fingers approaching and launches into assault mode on my face and chest


Here are some photos of the sisters together...I will add some video later today after I hunt down my phone.  Off to write another lecture (while also solo parenting again since husband is at two conferences in California)!

Husband insisted on a live tree this year, which was really pretty!

I bought them coordinated spirit animal outfits for Christmas!

An enormous icicle found on the sled commute - 5:30pm.

My New Years resolution is to do more yoga - I'm trying for daily.
That means we *all* do yoga, since I never get to do anything alone.
Sick baby

So big!




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