Month 10 of Life with Emily

10 months. 10 months ago our sweet girl was not here and she was tucked neatly inside my belly. That thought alone is crazy to me. How did I ever make it without her? I can't even remember what life was like without her, or what it was like to sleep in for that matter ;) It's funny to think about though, on a normal saturday Danny and I would sleep in until noon, do a few chores around the house, take naps, go out to dinner at 8.....what a boring life. I love our organized choas now (allright, maybe it's not even organized ;) Emily is our world and I'm so thankful for this change in every way. I know I say every month that this is our favorite, but this one is! She is just chatting away, interacting, exploring, laughing and being a little jokester every single day. I can't believe I'm starting to plan her first birthday. Seems like yesterday I was stuck in the fog of her being 3 weeks old thinging "I will NEVER get through this." But here we are! What a complete blessing.....a sticky one at that :)

Stats: 19 lbs 10 oz- 50th percentile; 27.75 inches tall- 37th percentile; 18.5 inch head circumference- 97th percentile. HA, a big head for a big brain ;) She is in 12 month clothes and on the 3rd snap setting on our diapers with a medium rise.

New Stuff: Emily now has 4 teeth, 2 top and 2 bottom; she got them at 7, 8, 9 and 9.5 months old. She is "talking" up a storm. Dada, mama, baba, gaga, lots of ka's, ha's, and ba's. She knows Dah (dog). If we ask her where Scout, her balloon, her laptop and dino are, she smiles and crawls to them....she's so smart. We are teaching her "touchdown" and to put her hands above her head, she is catching on fast! She is so close to walking that it scares me. She can clap on demand and loves to drink out of big people's cup. She has not taken to any sippy cups yet. Her longest stretch of sleep was 7 hours and 48 minutes at 9.5 months old (it didn't last though, haha). She is napping better....as soon as she hit 10 months it's like she learned how to nap a little better. She loves baby food pouches so she can feed herself. She will turn the music on on all of her toys and bounce her legs and butt up and down to dance! She LOVES dancing and that makes this momma so happy. She loves walking with her push dino. Waved byebye to dada when he left for work. She started pointing to things right at 10 months. She also had her first HAIRCUT! We went to Reene who cuts mine and almost all of my family's hair and it went really well. She cried a bit, but did good.

Schedule: Emily goes to bed around 8:30-9:30 and sleeps until about 8:30 (not all together). Once she's up for the day, she takes a 1-1.5 hour nap around 11:30. Then she is up for 4 hours and takes another afternoon nap around 4-5 that lasts from 30minutes-1 hour. Bedtime routine starts around 8.

Eating: We are still breastfeeding and I'm SO thankful for it. The girl loves to nurse and I'm so proud of our breastfeeding relationship! She is eating about every 4 hours during the day; every 3-3.5 if she didn't eat much solids. She gets banana slices and blueberries in the mornings with puffs and a pouch of similar foods. For lunch she typically gets raspberries, grapes, mango chunks or peaches, and a pouch. For dinner she gets avocado, grapes, carrots, peas, corn, and green beans. She has not been eating much lately at all. I offer her a wide variety but she just doesn't want it and I'm not going to force it. One day it will click for her!

Allergy: Emily still has her milk/soy protein allergy and reflux. Our pediatrician wants us to try to reintroduce it in my diet around a year. Just this week we have gone down to half a tab of Prevacid instead of her full tab and she seems to be doing ok. We will know soon if she is going to be ok with just half a tab. I'd desperately love to get her off of these meds...I hate medicating her. Hate it.

UTI/Kidney situation: This is a new section and I'm so sad about that. Right before Emily turned 10 months old, she got incredibly sick with a 102+ fever and was completely lethargic. My mom and I rushed her to the pediatrician (Danny was on his way back into town) and we went to the hospital to have a urine test, xray, and blood work done. It came back that she had a severe UTI and kidney infection. We also had a renal ultrasound done to see if her kidneys had any structural problems, and they turned out fine. She was on antibiotics for 10 days, and a week after being off of them, she spiked a high fever again. We took her to the pedi, and did another urine test which came back positive for the same bacteria that her first one was. Since this is a new UTI, our pedi wants to do a VCUG which is another test of the bladder to see if she has reflux. Danny and I are praying about this and will decide about getting the invasive VCUG soon. Please keep our sweet girl in your prayers!

Sleep: She is sleeping one long stretch of 5-6.5 hours, then 3-4, then another 1-2. Naps are about an hour long. I rock her for naps and put her down. At bedtime, we nurse and rock, but I've started putting her down awake. The past two nights she has just rolled over and gone to sleep without a peep! She's getting so big.

Favorite things: Activity table, Dino, blocks, puffs, balloons, starting to love her ball popper, MIRRORS, magnets on the fridge, and her activity pool.

We also had her oen year photos taken and it was a BLAST! We made a big puffy "1" and a huge cupcake for her. They were so special and I will be posting them a little later :)

                                            Her 9 month pic from last month