10 Months Old!

Helping with dinner.  Marinating a potato with saliva, then adding turmeric

I can not believe that ten months have passed already!  Remember when she looked like this?

2 weeks old

It is almost unfair how fast the first year goes, and how quickly they grow.  She's such a peanut.  ♥

So her latest things are that she popped her first tooth on December 30th!  She also has started signing "milk" which of course she does when she wants to breastfeed, but she will also do if she wants ME in general, or just really really really wants something and can't seem to get us to do it.  I think it is her only 'word' and if she gets frustrated she communicates with it, even though it isn't the right word for what she wants...
She will also sign "milk" while breastfeeding, which is so cool, and to me is the best thing about baby signing~they can communicate with you what they are thinking about at a really young age.  She's thinking, "milk!  I'm having milk!" and wants to 'talk' about it, so she signs to me.  When they get  a little older they can tell you they are looking for the 'bird' that was at your back window yesterday, by signing 'bird' even though they can't talk yet, or something similar.  It always surprises me what good memories babies have, and what they are thinking about when they start expanding their sign vocabulary!
She also took her first steps just before 9 months, as I told you, but hasn't gotten fully confident about walking just yet.  She will take three or four steps at once here and there, but for the most part she is lacking in confidence.  And she crawls really fast, so walking must seem rather tedious and inefficient.  =)

Last Sunday at church she fell and hit her mouth and bled everywhere; the piece of skin that connects the upper gums to the upper lip got cut all the way through~between that and cutting new teeth (there are two more right behind the first one) her mouth is pretty sore.  Poor baby.  And poor us; she's pretty cranky!

To fend off comments about how she's so happy all the time...

With all her new mobility (add climbing to the mix; you have seen all the basket and hearth pictures, but she also climbs anything she can manage to get onto, and will climb up staircases every chance she gets) she has thinned out already, not so rolly polly around the belly anymore!  I noticed it when I had to start fastening her diapers tighter around the legs and waist again~I love the adjustability of Fuzzibunz.  Awesome.

Her hair is getting longer and is as wild and spiky as ever, although with some water and slicking down repeatedly we can sometimes get it to stay down.  I think she looks more like a boy with it down flat.  Of course that doesn't bother me.  I like to dress her up all pretty but I also like to dress her neutral (today she looked like a boy for the first half of the day, and a girl for the second half after she explode-a-pooped on her boy outfit: best of both worlds), because some days it's nice to just be a person instead of who the world wants you to be, in so many ways...

Amarys' likes and dislikes haven't changed much in the last thirty days so I will hold off on the list for now.  But we took the kids swimming last week as a family and I think we can add waterbaby to her list of likes!  She loooooved the pool!  When I took the boys back again this week for swimming lessons she was determined to get in the water, too, and was pretty disappointed (a.k.a. screaming like a veloceraptor and clawing at my face) when I didn't take her in this time.
She talks in her sleep.
She eats everything and loves it all.
She loves to be carried.
I love to do laundry that has pink and purple in it that isn't mine.

Aaaaand cute.  She looks like my cousin Sara in this hat, for some reason :)

Don't mind the fact that I look like my head was replaced by a Canon in the above photo *eyeroll*~Amarys looked really cute so who cares that I look weird?  =)  I don't mind the camera in the photo but in this picture it has replaced my head completely...

I'm astonished by her energy.  I've had energetic kids since day #1, so that is nearly nine years, and this kid is the energizer bunny.  When she's falling asleep she literally does laps around her bed, talking, scratching the mesh bedrails, kicking the head board, screeching at the night light, and performing olympic style gymnastic routines while nursing, until eventually she crashes.  All day she's on the move.  When she's nursing, she's flailing a foot around and trying to catch it with one of her hands, while repeatedly bending her other knee in a semi headstand.  When she's playing, she is flinging toys around and squawking.  I knew this about her before she was born; she would kick me with persistent irritation all day long in the womb, warming up for marathons in the evening and finally dropping off to sleep at night.  Mommy's little monster!  I'm also astonished at my patience with her.  Although I still live with an anxiety disorder, it is well controlled and this post partum year has been the calmest and happiest of all four of my kids.  This carries me really far when I need to dig deep to get through another day with the teething velocoraptor velcro girl who will not be comforted.  Or simply the climbing machine on steroids, Little Miss Determination tackling the chairs in the dining room!

Smart and sassy, that sums her up.  And beloved.