Brooklyn: 10 Months Old

Another month is here and gone! Brooklyn turned 10 months old on Friday. This has been a good month overall with lots of new developments. Now, onto the specifics…   Brooklyn now weighs around 20 1/4 lbs (70-75th percentile) and is 29 inches long (80-85th percentile) according to my measurements. All the crawling she does must burn a lot of calories since she isn’t gaining weight that fast anymore. Brooklyn is still a great eater though! She still nurses 4 times a day and doesn’t seem to be getting uninterested in it at all. She is eating 3 meals a day also, and she will eat just about anything we give her. She is eating more and more table food and less purees, which has made life a lot simpler. It’s nice when she can eat what we eat! She has tried all sorts of food like vegetable soup, salmon, macaroni and cheese, and meatloaf, and she has loved all of it! She prefers to pick up food and feed herself, but will still eat from a spoon when she is in the right mood :) She absolutely loves sweet potatoes and will eat them in any form…those have been a hit since the beginning. She isn’t really loving banana anymore, but hopefully that will change, or I won’t be able to call her my daughter!

A good night’s sleep continues to be an elusive thing in the Grant house. (Maybe it will always be this way??). We never really know what to expect—sometimes Brooklyn sleeps through the night in her crib without waking up at all, but most of the time lately she’s been waking up several times a night. I think she’s slept with us 6 out of the 7 past nights. I’m not really sure that it can be blamed on teething; I think it’s more an issue of waking up and realizing that we’re not right there with her. (She’s been very clingy lately). I was able to “pat” her back to sleep one night this week, but most of the time “crying it out” and other measures don’t work. Guess we should have enjoyed our couple of months of great sleep while we had the chance!

To her credit, Brooklyn is a great napper these days. She usually takes two naps per day (somewhere around 11 AM and 4:30 PM), and she will usually sleep about 1-2 hours at a time. So nice! She took a record long nap a few weeks ago…she slept for 2 hours and 40 minutes!! Maybe she’s more tired during the day since she doesn’t sleep as well at night anymore…

Another reason for her long naps is probably the fact that she is SO active these days. I was told over and over when Brooklyn was born that “each stage has its own challenges”—and I definitely understand the challenges of a mobile baby. It’s a workout! I can’t tell you how many pieces of cat food I’ve pulled out of Brooklyn’s mouth. She also likes to eat loose strands of carpet, cat litter, and anything else that she can get her hands on. I obviously need to vacuum and sweep multiple times a day! Her main method of getting around is still army crawling, but she is starting to crawl with her belly off the ground sometimes. She is also pulling up to her knees fairly easily these days, and she has pulled up to her feet once or twice. She can also go from lying down to sitting up with ease. It’s been so neat to watch her get stronger and more coordinated each week!

You probably can’t tell from these pictures, but Brooklyn is in the middle of getting her first two teeth! The bottom right started coming in a few weeks ago, and the bottom left followed shortly after. I don’t think either of them are all the way up yet, but I guess the worst part is over. It seemed like the second tooth didn’t bother her as much as the first. It’s pretty cute to see her smile with those little teeth now!

I guess Brooklyn noticed our cats for the first time when she was 5 or 6 months old. She was so fascinated with them at first, but then she kind of lost interest for a while. Well, she is definitely obsessed again! She thinks Gabby especially is the greatest thing ever. She loves to hear her meow, but her favorite thing to do is chase her. Of course, Brooklyn usually isn’t fast enough to touch Gabby, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. Gabby doesn’t seem to mind Brooklyn too much and will come pretty close and tease her. It will be interesting to see how things change when Brooklyn can walk and run!

It’s been interesting to see Brooklyn interact with other people lately. She LOVES other babies and usually loves kids. But, sometimes adults are another matter. If she is around an unfamiliar stranger who gets too close, she will either bury her head into my shoulder or start crying really hard. Other times, she doesn’t mind attention from strangers (like when we’re at the grocery store), but I guess it depends on her mood. She is also definitely a mommy’s girl right now. Hopefully it’s not hurting Travis’s feelings too much, but she is just not very content when he holds her these days. I’m sure things will flip flop at some point, and I’ll be the one left out :)

Brooklyn is definitely very expressive. It’s not hard to tell when she excited, happy, content, upset, etc. She loves to talk and make noise. I always say “meow” when one of the cats walks in front of her, and I promise it sounded just like she said “meow” right back one day! She hasn’t really said many “words” that we can understand, but right now she loves to say ‘bah’, ‘dah’, and ‘yah’. She also says something that sounds like “loddy doddy” a lot. It almost sounds like she’s yodeling :) Recently, Travis had to get up at church and do the scripture reading, and when Brooklyn saw him walking up front, she yelled out “Dah! Dah!” It was so sweet!

This month, Brooklyn’s favorite things are Gabby and Felix, taking baths, crawling around and exploring the house, putting EVERYTHING she can in her mouth, playing patty-cake, picking up food and feeding herself, going to the grocery store, and being tickled or tossed in the air :)

Brooklyn’s least favorite things are being put on the changing table, being spoon fed (sometimes), getting something taken away from her, being held by Daddy (sometimes!), and going to sleep at night.

I’ve really noticed that Brooklyn’s hair has really thickened up this month. Her feet have also grown. She’s actually outgrown her first couple of pairs of shoes! She is still wearing 12 month size clothes and size 3 diapers. It’s nice that she’s not outgrowing clothes and diapers as fast as she was in the beginning :)

We love you, Miss B! You tire us out sometimes, but it is so,so worth it!  We didn’t know what we were missing out on before you came along :)