10 months

You are a beautiful baby girl! I love the smiles you have for me every morning when I go to your room to get you. It's sweet when you wake up and instead of crying for me, I open your door and find you sitting in bed playing with a toy or looking at a book. You are a MOVER! You have figured out how to crawl on your hands and knees and can move pretty quick now. You've been crawling like this for about 2-3 weeks. You are also pulling up on EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter if it looks impossible, you will still give it your best effort and most of the time you succeed at pulling up. Daddy always laughs when you use your teeth to pull yourself up on something. He thinks it's pretty funny to watch. Yesterday I saw you pull up to the coffee table, stand up and then you dropped a puzzle piece you had in your hand. So, with one hand on the coffee table, you reached down and picked up the puzzle piece and stood back up, all without falling! I was very impressed. Also, there have been a few times where you have let go and stood for a millisecond without holding on. You are getting brave! Your favorite thing lately is to pull up on a coffee table and then walk around it trying to reach anything on it.You love to clap and think you are pretty fun for learning how to do it too. You also love to wave "bye bye" to people.
One of your favorite games right now is peek-a-boo. If you get a hold of a blanket or really anything that you can lift to cover your face, you light up when someone says "Where's Ashley?" When you pull the blanket you laugh when we say "There She is!" or "Peek-A-Boo."
Since you love to stand up you, bath time has become a little bit of a challenge because you like to stand up instead of sit in the water and play. But, these last few times, you've sat and played with the toys longer than before. So, maybe that is changing.
Another thing that has become a big CHALLENGE is diaper changes! You automatically want to flip to your tummy and crawl away. When we do a diaper change on your changing table, you immediatley want to reach for the shelf nearby and get a toy, or attempt to crawl onto the shelf. (Which I might add is a very dangerous act). You also love to pull on your hair bows that are hanging above the changing table.
Any other time we mess with the hair bows, you are not interested, you have started pulling them off the second they are on your head. We have to trick you in order for you to forget they are on there. They are so cute though, so we try often!
Your hair is getting longer and seems to be entering an awkward stage where it is at a funny length and won't lay down all the time so it sticks up. I think it might be like this for awhile until we get some length on that hair.  You LOVE to eat. This has become one of your favorite things. You love to feed yourself, especially cheerios, but even more so you love BANANAS! You get so excited and your legs start kicking when you see a banana. We have tried black beans, and tortillas, crackers, carrots, waffles, spaghetti, pasta, shredded cheese, peas, green beans, rice, and so far you really like all of it. I'm sure we've tried some other things too, but you seem to eat whatever is put in front of you. Along with eating the table food, you will usually eat one or sometimes 2 bottles of baby food. You are a growing girl. We have started to give you water/juice (which is really just flavored water because it is very diluted) in a sippy cup. Most of the time you like to just chew on the cup, but sometimes you do drink it.
You are in some 6-9 month onesie outfits still. They are getting small, but since it is still warm, that seems to be the best option for the weather. You do have some 9-12 months too and that fits the best. You weighed 19 lbs 9 oz at your last dr's appt (where we found you still have an ear infection!) You are growing fast!
You are still in size 3 diaper, but we have actually switched to cloth diapers, so the sizes don't really matter so much anymore. But, we are still using our supply of disposables up, and the size 3 fits.
 I wonder if you will become attached to a blanket or a stuffed animal. In your crib you usually have a pig and a blanket, when I go in to feed you in the middle of the night (yes we are still doing at least 2 middle of the night feedings :)  you like to bring one of those items with you to the chair to hold onto while you nurse. It's sweet!
We are still trying to convince you to say  mama or dada, but nothing yet. You certainly know the sign for milk and you have signed it on occasion. You know the sign for "all done", and we haven't been practicing "more" as much as we were at first. Better get back on that one.
Thank you for bringing so many smiles to our days! We love you!