Olivia at 10 Months: The baby is becoming a toddler

Well hey there, 10 months!

Double digits!

Say it isn’t so!

This month brought us two teeth, crawling and sickness. It’s been a wild ride. I’ve been making a conscious effort to blog more, and when I look back at this past year, I’m a bit disappointed, because I wish I would have posted more. I mean, this blog is better than any baby book could ever be and I wish I would have been documenting more and not just these monthly updates and holidays. But here we go, onto month 10!

Practicing some new yoga poses.

We celebrated Chris’s birthday. And we took Olivia on her first hike. (Another reason to post more. It makes these monthly updates so much shorter :))

Our trip to Texas to visit our friends was cancelled due to crappy unforeseen health circumstances. We ended up losing hundreds of dollars with the cancelled flight and beach house, but the worst part is we can’t afford to go back there until we do our FET in well over a year from now. So that sucks. Chris ended up taking the time off anyway and we filled it with fun family stuff and household projects, like cleaning up the backyard and painting our bedroom. Necessary, but utterly boring to blog about.

Nicknames: Ollie (Ironically, that’s the nickname of the month.) Miss Ollie, Miss Olivia (when she’s doing something she isn’t suppose to do), Livvie, Monkey, Monks.   
Weight: 20.6 lbs
Length: 29 inches 
Head circumference: 46 cm
Diaper size: 3
Clothing size: 6-9 and 9 months

Eating: New foods tried: waffles, kiwi, chili, summer squash, baked beans, fettuccine alfredo, Mexican rice, refried beans, green beans, zucchini, cottage cheese, sloppy joe’s, honeydew and chicken enchiladas. You guys, I’m so much better now at giving her two meals a day. Breakfast is usually toast with peanut butter or avocado, waffles, fruit.

I’m getting better on giving her what we have for dinner, as long as it’s not too salty. One night we had this chili, (which is one of my favorites!) and I did relent and give her a spoonful, but I’m still worried about her choking on the beans and lately have been letting go of my fears of her choking on things. She is doing wonderful with BLW and hardly ever gags anymore. I think it’s good for her to have spices, but I always have to be mindful of salt. She does like taco meat which I give her because I omit the salt when I make my own seasoning.  She is nursing still about every 3-4 hours (or less) and once overnight.

Sleeping: She’s done some weird nights of waking at 11:30 or 2:30am. Overall, it’s been good, but recently, she’s been having a regression and I’m not sure if it’s teething or a growth spurt. She wakes up between 3:30 and 5:30 for nursing and then will usually sleep until 8:00, though some days it’s as early as 7 and as late as 9am. She’s been good about staying asleep or putting herself back to bed.
She naps around 10:00 usually for 2 hours and then again around 3:00 for another 1.5 hours.We had to buy the fabric crib protectors because she’s taken to biting her crib up. Like a beaver. Or a small puppy. It’s like having a small puppy in the house.

Milestones: She’s pulling herself up to stand now. In fact, anything that she has to sit on the floor with is pretty much a waste of time.

She’s clapping. Getting better at crawling faster. Plays peekaboo.

Speech: Says “dada” much to Chris’s delight. (I wonder if it’s easier now that she has teeth?) Still saying, “Mama” and “Baba.” “Geeee! and “Iiiiiieeee!” “Mom-mom.” Basically, she’s been frantically babbling and using her vowels this month.

Health: We were doing so well. But then she went to her 9 month check up and I swear she picked something up there. Three days later, I got a sore throat and she got a fever and runny nose. So of course I’m clueless and incessantly texted my friends on what to do for her. I doubled up on my Juice Plus and used Thieves EO on both our feet. I gave her Motrin and lukewarm baths and she gradually was left with just a runny nose. It was kind of a 24-hour thing for both of us. But I’ve had to use the Nose Frieda pretty much every night to clear her nose out.

We also had an incident (for lack of a better term) with her having a reaction to eggs. I gave her some of my scrambled eggs one morning (this was probably her 4th time eating them) and was really excited because she was actually eating them verses rubbing them on her arms and throwing them on the floor. We finished eating and I stuck her in the pack and play so I could clean up. About ten minutes after she ate, I went to her and she had a red blistery looking rash around her mouth.
I spoke with a triage nurse and made an appointment with a family practice doctor that afternoon. She told me no eggs until I speak with her pediatrician. That this time it was a local reaction, and next time could be a more severe one involving her whole face or an anaphylactic one. “You may need an epi pen,” she warned. I don’t know. I’m not 100% convinced, especially since I got a lot of feedback on my Facebook page saying otherwise. Right now, I’m staying away from it, but I will talk to her doctor and possibly an allergist because I feel like completely abstaining from eggs could actually make it worse. And I get that a reaction usually comes after an exposure already, but I mean, she’s had eggs several times before this, just not in the same quantity. Regardless, it sucks. I was so good at trying to expose her to allergens early and both Chris and I don’t have food allergies. So we’ll see what comes of this.

Teeth: Her two lower teeth are coming in beautifully. For awhile, she refused to let me take a picture of them, but then I got one: (shhh, don’t tell her). Recently, she’s been showing more signs of teething and crawls around with the saddest red cheeks you’ve ever seen. That, combined with the screaming again and worsening sleep, leaves me wondering if more teeth are coming.

This was taken at the beginning of the month when her teeth were barely coming through. They are much bigger now!

Likes: Her glow worm. I used to put this in her crib while she lay in there to distract her when she was itty bitty, but it was lost in her stuffed animal basket for a long time. When I found it again, she LOVED it.

Standing. Always standing. Eating. Chasing her little plastic balls around the kitchen. Climbing kitchen chairs. Climbing the person nearest to her. She doesn’t discriminate.

Swinging. Splashing in the tub. Her light up and talking toys. Toby. Participating in FaceTime with Auntie Ceena. Pulling out ALL her books in her bookshelf. In fact, books are probably her favorite thing right now, to my delight. Whether it’s Grandpa reading her a book, or looking through them herself, she can spend 15 minutes doing this (which in Baby World is like three hours.)

Dislikes: When you put her books back in her bookshelf. We also discovered she HATES her nose being wiped. And the Nose Frieda? Forget it. It actually breaks my heart because all she had to do was look at it when I brought it out and it would send her into a wail. Having her hands and face wiped after eating. Putting her wearable blanket on when it’s bedtime (maybe it’s the anticipation of going to bed she hates). Taking things away from her.

Undecided about: Strangers. She isn’t sure if she wants to be shy and look away or break into a huge smile and offer them a toy. So she kind of does a little of both.

Looking forward to: All of the fall stuff. Seriously. I’m so excited. We’ll be making a visit to the apple orchard in a few weeks and I can’t wait. I’ve talked for years about wanting to take my baby there and now I finally get the chance. And I can’t wait to play with her in the leaves and take her on walks in the cooler weather.

She’s just growing up so fast. She’s acting more like a toddler than a baby now. She knows when she isn’t supposed to be doing something and looks around discreetly before shoving things like clumps of dog fur in her mouth as fast as she can before I notice. Or smiling purposefully at me when I say something funny to her. (She thinks her mom is hilarious.)

We have two months before her first birthday. I STILL haven’t done a thing for it and we were just discussing this weekend that we HAVE to get going on this.

40 weeks

41 weeks

42 weeks

43 weeks