the life of an eleven month old....

Hard to believe Addelyn is almost a year old! To best give you a picture of what Addelyn is doing these days, here are some pics and explanations from the life of an eleven month old.....

She doesn't like to sit still and smile for these monthly pictures. You should see all of the pictures that were taken trying to get ONE good shot with the paper included. She loves to play with these little colored balls that she is trying to eat in the picture. They can be found in random spots, hidden throughout our house. Her new realization is that small things fit into larger things. I often can't find my eye drops, my cell phone, and random items and will find them in shoes, baskets, toy bins, etc. I love to watch her development and realize that this is part of her learning of how things work!

She is starting to look like a little girl, not a baby. Need I say more, just look at this picture?!

It is fun to watch her with other babies and little kids. She often plays by herself but is usually very interested in what other kids are doing. She will crawl right up to them and often pulls herself up, using their bodies. Or the other little ones will do the same to her. She will pat their heads, babble, and often scream. Wonder what goes through her mind? And the minds of her little friends?
In this picture above, Kacey, one of my best friends from college, is visiting with her son Grayson. He is about seven months older than Addelyn and is a little sweetie.

She is cruising along the furniture quickly. She isn't walking yet, but sometimes takes a daring leap and lunges from one thing to another. She is a quick crawler so often finds it is much easier to crawl from Point A to Point B. She does like to stand for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything. She will stand there and laugh and laugh. She thinks she is pretty cool. :)

She smiles a lot and laughs a lot. So much joy!

She loves meal time. She does pretty well with her sippy cup these days. She also uses the sign language for "more" and lets us know when she wants more. We will ask, "More green beans?" and if that isn't what she wants she will shake her head no. It has been great to be able to communicate with her about her food likes and dislikes. Right now, our biggest struggle is her love of cottage cheese. She could eat it non-stop. We don't feed it to her all of the time but she saw it on Mark's plate the other night and wouldn't stop whining because she wanted it. It is pretty funny. We have learned that we need to feed her everything else first and end with the cottage cheese if that is on the menu for the night!

She is into everything and anything, especially the things we don't WANT her to play with. Here she discovered the pads and tampons when I left her alone for probably two minutes. I had to laugh. She also loves taking the toilet paper off the roll. The garbage is fun too. I am curious to see how the Christmas tree will work this year.

She LOVES her new scooter from Grandma Stewart. She thinks she is pretty cool when she rides on it. She is pretty slow going forward but can fly backward! Sometimes she waves like she is in a parade.

She is sleeping well these days for the most part. She goes down around 7-7:30 p.m. and sleeps through the night and wakes up anytime from 4-6 a.m. for a bottle. She then will sleep until 7 or 8. Mark and I truly enjoy our sleep so we're thinking we have a child who feels the same. Hopefully this lasts!

That is about it for eleven months. We can't believe how quickly time flies. I look at our little girl and hardly remember what it was like to rock her in my arms as a little baby!