Happy 11 Months Birthday, Abigail!

Abigail is now 11 months old. I. Just. Can’t. I know I say this every time, but it’s going too fast!

This month, she has really started showing a passion for climbing. She climbs on the kids’ table, any chairs that are short enough for her, and the slide. She climbs into baskets, toy boxes, and dog crates. She climbs onto the bed and couch, and climbs down by herself. (Usually we help her because she’s not as proficient as we would like yet). She can stand up on her own with no support, and she walks around with support. She sometimes uses a kids’ chair as a walker.

When she’s not climbing, she’s searching for tiny things on the floor to show us. She holds them up proudly for us to see, right before putting them in her mouth. Obviously, she keeps us on our toes! She also likes to sit next to the bookshelf, tear all of the books off, and then pick one up and flip through the pages. Fortunately, they’re board books, so they’re sturdy.

She loves our cats. Cody was more into the dogs, but Abigail isn’t as fond of them. She tolerates them, but never seeks them out and occasionally will be upset if they get too in her face. The cats, on the other hand, are her jam. She crawls after them, tries to pet them, watches them, and generally just feels happier when she’s around them. She even tries to say our cat’s name, Luna. (She says “Una.”) I guess dog-person/cat-person is a trait determined at birth!

She loves food, too. Very different from Cody, who didn’t eat any solid foods until he was two years old and even to this day is extremely limited in what he will eat. Abigail is all about food. She will happily try anything we put in front of her, and she almost always likes it. We feed her baby finger foods and soft table foods, since she doesn’t have any teeth. She likes to self-feed, so we don’t often feed her purees.

This month she had her first trip to the beach, and she loved it. She loves trying to eat the sand, and having us dip her feet into the ocean water. She’s also been to the zoo several times. She doesn’t get it yet, of course, but it’s a fun activity for our family.

One detail I forgot to mention in a previous post was that she moved out of her infant car seat to a convertible car seat, still rear-facing of course, at about 9 ½ months old. She’s been more content in the car since the switch, and overall she is a great passenger. We don’t do a lot of driving or long trips, but for errands around town she does great and rarely cries.

She is still very clingy, and I spend a lot of time holding her. It can be challenging to get anything done! But, she also loves to play and explore, so it’s often a matter of taking advantage of those moments. She goes into the nursery at church on Sundays and does well, which is awesome! She will usually let other people hold her, but once she sees me again, it’s all over. She’s less mom-focused now at least, and doesn’t have as strong of a preference for me over her dad. In fact, she crawls to him and asks to be picked up as soon as he comes home every day! Then she snuggles on his chest. So sweet!