Eleven Months Old

Where does the time go? Next month we'll be celebrating Ellie's first birthday! So much has happened in the last month; I'll try to remember it all.

How Ellie has changed over the past month:

• Walking! Ellie cruises all over the place. She is getting more confident each day. She has been walking only when we stand her up first, but yesterday she pulled herself up at the coffee table and then let go to walk by herself. She is also trying to figure out how to stand up from a crawling position without grabbing anything to help her up.
• Teeth: Ellie started this month with just two teeth, and now has six! She has three on the top and three on the bottom. A fourth on top is about to pop through.
• She can now not only turn lights off, but also can turn them on.
• Ellie knows lots of words/sentences that we say now. When asked, she can point to our nose, chin, and cheeks. If we ask, "Where's Mama/Daddy?" she looks at the correct person. She also seems to know the dogs' names. I'm not sure if she knows which one is which, but she definitely knows that "Kip" and "Sebastian" mean the dogs. She will turn on/off the lights when asked. She "gives love" to us, the animals, and her toys - this involves burying her head in said object.
• She knows how to pat the animals. This is a big improvement from pulling their hair/tails/ears. We can say, "Pat-pat Moxie/Kip/Basty" and she pats them. This is usually followed by her "giving love" to them.
• No more nursing at night. This is less of a change in Ellie and more of a change in Mama, but it affects her all the same. Ellie had really began seeing nursing as "Mom's all-night buffet" and it was affecting all of our sleep. Now if she wakes in the night we go in and "shh shh" at her, pat her back a time or two, and then sit in a chair in her room until she goes to sleep. As I said in a previous post, I'll write more about this process when we are through the "sleep training."
• Ellie is all but through with jarred baby food. She has become very picky about being spoon fed, and is not quite ready to spoon feed herself (though we try), so she mainly enjoys eating finger foods that she can pick up and feed herself. The exception is yogurt, which she really enjoys eating for breakfast.
• Two naps still. She naps at roughly 9:ooam for about an hour and again at 1:00pm for about 1 1/2 hours.
• Bedtime is getting closer to 7:15pm instead of 7:45pm.

Events of the past month:

• First Christmas. We spent five days in Idaho and had a wonderful time with family. Santa filled Ellie's stocking (which Grandma B. made) and also brought her some LittlePeople ark animals. She really had fun ripping open her presents.
• Ellie slept through the night twice.