10 months!

Frida is 10 months old today!

I just found Sam's baby book. (It's actually just a fabric-covered diary-type book, but I recorded much of his first year in it, before I started blogging.) Sam at 10 months was surprisingly similar to Frida at 10 months, including in ways I had mis-remembered. Frida is, and Sam was:

- cross-crawling (both started around 9 months), cruising, occasional hands-free standing.
- getting into everything.
- eating cheerios, cheese, avocados, and little bits of lots of other stuff (cooked veggies, raw fruit, bread, crackers, meat, fish), vastly preferring self-feeding to being spoon-fed, and needing to be distracted to be fed via spoon.
- drinking water from a sippy cup and dropping it on the floor all the time.
- hating being strapped into anything, including stroller and booster seat.
- loving going anywhere in the ergo.
- loving being held by Daddy and dancing around.
- maybe having a recognizable word or two.
- clearly recognizing a few words.
- loving their babysitters.
- playing peek-a-boo.
- holding my fingers (wrists, in F's case) to clap my hands.
- co-sleeping at night.
- playing solo for surprising lengths of time.
- describable as determined, energetic, extraverted, inquisitive, and expressive.

Frida probably has a couple more signs/gestures (all done, bye-bye, hi), and appears much less interested in books than Sam was. She seems to sleep better once she finally falls to sleep in the evening, and she naps more during the day, but then Frida doesn't have the option of sleeping in as long as Sam did because she is often woken when we have to get up to bring Sam to school (except on weekends when, come to think of it, she naps considerably less). Sam had 2 bottom teeth and was working on the top four incisors all at once; Frida has one bottom incisor and is working on the second. There are differences, of course, but in terms of milestone-ish behaviors? I'm really struck by the similarities. Of course, Sam weighed about 1.5 times what Frida does (-: And I think her talent for quickly ripping up books and popping bits of them into her mouth is unique to her.

Frida at 10 months is charming and exploratory; she's determined and feisty and fun-loving. She is a master at wiggling out of straps (especially restaurant high chairs), and shows signs of being a climber. She has to be given lots of chances to eat, because she often gets bored of eating after a few bites or a quick nurse (and, as noted, she's tiny). She adores her daddy, wants her mommy when she's tired and wants to snuggle, loves her nanny, and thinks her brother is the funniest, coolest, most amazing person on the planet. And she has a great chortling sound that she makes when she's up to something (like last night, when she crawled from the living room through the dining room, under the length of the dining table to where Daddy, visible to her only as a pair of legs and feet, was sitting paying bills, chortling all the way until she reached him and pulled herself up on his legs). She is a sweet little Bean and much loved!

Omi left this afternoon, having visiting for a few days. As always, there are many improvements, small and large, all around our home; notably, our garden is looking much more beautiful and cared-for. As I was leaving to drive Sam to school this morning, he was saying goodbye to her, and said, "Omi, I like you because you're so kind. But I also don't like you because you're a woman, not like me. I like Opa because he's a man, like me. But I also don't like him because he plays tricks on me." Hm, ok, well, glad that's all clear.