10 Months!

Daddy teaching Jane to drive

Hello Again! Didya miss us much?

Today Jane is 10 months (and NOW she's been out of me longer than inside of me ;-) and she's picked up so many new tricks, I couldn't not write.

Here's Jane's list of accomplishments:

• a waving pro--she even makes an intonation that sounds like how I say "hi." She'll even hear someone say "hi" or "bye" and will wave.
• has invented a game called Point. She extends her index finger to whoever happens to walk near her and keeps pointing until they touch their finger to hers (and if you say "point!" when you do it, you usually get a giggle, too).
• is learning to fold her arms for various lengths of time. I learned to start early with this one from my sister. We pray together as a family in the morning regularly and at meals. We try to keep them short and in the beginning one of us would help her fold her arms and whisper "hold still" in her ear (which she now knows the meaning of and will obey 80% of the time) until the end of the prayer. Today she was a champ, adults at church pray SO much longer than we usually do, and she did pretty good considering. On Friday, I told her to fold her arms and she did!! Well, she grabbed her forearms (she's still a bit chubby, you know). Now she will fold her arms 70% of the time when we tell her to. Granted, it doesn't last long, but she knows what it means and does it. Awesome.
• started scooting, finally! (not that I'm particularly eager to chase her around the house) She's figured out how to use her legs to push herself a bit and her tummy has come up off the floor a few times. I think we'll start a betting pool to decide when she actually starts to crawl, if at all ;-) She also really likes to walk with us holding her hands and gets a kick out of climbing the stairs that way too. She can only just barely get her foot up and she's so diligent and careful in doing it. Adorable.
• has a new nickname. Kind of. Jane has perfected the art of turning around and around in circles on her bum or her belly, just like a Lazy Susan. She get's going really fast, too.
• really gets a kick out of peek-a-boo, and has even started putting the blanket over her own eyes or ours. She'll then make another sound that sounds like the way we say "there ______ is" (which we say a lot in one of her favorite stories, Where is Baby's Belly Button.
• has developed clear preferences for what books she likes and will find them herself. She'll roll over, scoot over to the pile and go through it until she finds the ones she wants. The clear favorite right now is Go Dogs, Go! (Ludlows be proud!) But she also likes I Can Fly, Where's Spot, the aforementioned Belly Button book and Buzz Said the Bee. She's lost interest in the board books that don't have flaps and is fascinated by pages. She's even figured out how to use her thumb to fan through the pages (you know, like when shuffling a deck of cards) until she gets a hold of one page so she can turn it (Eric is so excited about this!). She's so careful and tonight flipped through half of Go Dogs, Go! ONE PAGE AT A TIME! And then she got bored. Or impatient. Yep, she's our daughter (careful, bored easily, and impatient! bonus points if you know which trait goes to which parent)!
• can sip through a straw (Aunt Melisa taught her this. All the Monroe's keep trying to get her to drink pop. Good thing Mom is always around to put an end to that).
• barely tolerates being fed from a spoon. Although we bought her some baby spoons yesterday and gave them a whirl this morning at breakfast. With some support and coaching, she did great. She was totally into it. There were at least 5 successful bites...aw, the small stuff ;-)
• has a new tooth! Number 7 came in on Friday, she now has three on the bottom and four on top. And we're pretty sure those molars are coming in as well (yes, her sleep has been comparatively erratic)
• has hair that lays flat 50% of the time. It's finally starting to grow enough to lay down (*sigh* I kind of miss it)
  

Love the super bib? It's full coverage! I got it at IKEA for uber-cheap...