Today Abigail is 10 months old! She has finally learned to crawl around a bit and really likes testing boundaries. She can't quite get up on all fours yet, so she sort of drags her body around using her arms and pushing off with her feet. A few weeks ago she had a (late) 9 month well check and she was almost 20 pounds, so we're pretty sure she is over that now.
Abby still loves food and enjoys trying all sorts of new things, especially if they come from Mama and Dada's plates! Favorite foods right now include banana, peaches, mandarin oranges, eggs, cheese, peas, pasta, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and raisins. Occasionally she will refuse a food, but it's not often! She's gotten so great at self-feeding that most days we don't even use a bib anymore.
We worked past a three day long nursing strike last week and thankfully Abigail is nursing again, although the number of times per day varies. One thing that does NOT vary is that she is still waking in the middle of the night to nurse :-/. She usually wakes up around 3am and starts fussing. I try to let her be and see if she will settle, but her fussing always gets louder and louder until I can tell the tears are about to come. Sometimes we send Dave in to comfort her instead, but that pretty much guarantees a total baby meltdown. She wants to nurse and nothing else. So, almost every night I give in and nurse her, as much as I want to night wean her and get her sleeping through the night like she used to back in her pre-teething days! Thankfully, she nurses and goes right back to sleep, so I can't complain too much. Abby has been taking great naps lately and we follow a really consistent 2-3-4 schedule which works great for us. She usually wakes up at 7am, then naps for about an hour and a half at 9am and again at 1:30pm. Bedtime is at 7pm. It's a schedule I like a lot, and apparently so does she!
Abby is experimenting with lots of sounds, and sometimes we are pretty sure that she is saying the word "cat". Still no "Mama" yet :( The most amazing thing is her word comprehension these days. If you ask her where Dada, cat, or Mama is, she will look right at the person in question. When we read books I can ask her to turn the page and she knows what that means. She most definitely understands being told no, and she doesn't like it one bit! It's really incredible to watch her learn everyday.
It's hard to believe that Abby's first Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up. Then our little girl will be one year old before we know it!
