It’s no joke when they say how fast time goes with a baby, and when life is going so fast I think it’s important to take a minute to note down some of the bits you want to remember. I decided at the beginning of each new month I would do a wee update on her development as well as a round up of some favourite things from the previous month. Her month-iversary is on the 2nd each month so that fits nicely with the calendar months too!
I honestly can’t believe my baby girl is now 10 months old. It really feels like she’s been here forever, but also it has been the fastest 10 months of my life! I guess time flies when you’re having fun. I’m really lucky that I’m having a total of 15 months off work so I still have almost 4 months before I need to leave her (and only going back part time too).
As much as I want time to slow down, and feel sad when I think about the tiny baby days, I’m absolutely loving watching all her little developments and new things she’s learning. Every day brings a new sound, or a new funny wee face. She’s growing and changing so fast and every new stage is my new favourite stage (and the new hardest stage 😂)!
{ S T A T S }
Last week I did a very non scientific weigh in by holding her on the scales with me, which showed she was around 24.5lbs. That is pretty heavy, but she’s also pretty tall so she’s in proportion. It’s also lighter than I estimated she would be, so her weight gain is definitely levelling off, presumably as she’s becoming more active. She’s mostly wearing 6-9 and 9-12 clothes, but in the odd T-shirt (that I prefer to be a bit looser) she’s in 12-18.
{ E A T I N G }
She’s always been a hungry wee monkey, and is on 7oz bottles apart from her evening and bedtime bottle when she takes between 8-10oz. She’s started to naturally drop some bottles though, and after her morning bottle at 7ish, it can be lunch time before she’s looking for more milk.
We’ve been doing Baby Led Weaning (BLW) since the day she turned 6 months old and I’ve discovered that just like her mama, she loves cheese and carbs! I’m loving BLW because she’s getting so independent when feeding herself, she loves sitting with us at the dinner table, and her fine motor skills have come on amazingly. Just yesterday she was using pincer grip to lift individual peas! I’m so glad I went the BLW route as I’ve loved watching her skills develop.
{ S L E E P }
She still sleeps in beside me and to be honest I’m happy to keep her there as long as I can! In June she went through a really unsettled period, and we started bed sharing, as it was the only place she would sleep. Its not for everyone but we’re happy as we all get the most sleep that way! I absolutely love having her so close to me, and sometimes in the night she’ll wake up and seek me out for a cuddle and to snuggle in closer. It absolutely melts my heart 🥰
When she was younger she would only nap in my arms, and they were a bit sporadic, but for the past couple of months she’s been happy to nap in bed. On days we are at home, she’ll go for a 2 hour nap about 3 hours after she woke up in the morning. Initially I had to nap with her, or she only slept about 10 minutes, but now she’ll snooze a good couple of hours alone. To be honest though I stay up too late most nights (I’ve always been a night owl) so I usually enjoy a wee nap with her. I do need to get out of that habit though because it means I have no time to get anything done!
{ D E V E L O P M E N T }
Well I mentioned above that I’m finding this the hardest stage yet, and that’s simply because she’s into EVERYTHING! I guess each stage brings new challenges but at the moment it’s the constant fear that she’s going to hurt herself because she’s always crawling, climbing, trying to stand and walk, and obviously has zero awareness of dangers!
She’s actually getting so steady on her feet, and she can lower herself back to sitting gently as well. She’s always cruising along the furniture so I don’t think it will be long before we see those first steps!
She’s the chattiest wee thing ever (you may have seen on my Instagram Stories!) and ive loved listening to how her wee sounds have progressed. She’s gone from babbling to a kind of squealing noise – thankfully it’s a cute squeal haha – and now she’s onto making proper speech sounds, although not words as such. Her current favourite sound is something like chk chk chk, and the one word she does say is mama.
She makes the most hilarious faces – she learned each new funny face over a few months and now she goes through her full repertoire, even more so when it makes us laugh as she loves to get a reaction!
Her favourite things to do at the moment are read her books and dance. Her favourite books are 10 Little Princesses (which we read every night at bedtime) and Dear Zoo (as she loves lifting the flaps). She loves sitting just flicking through her books by herself – which makes my teacher heart very happy ❤️
Any time she hears music she starts her little bum shuffle and clapping her hands – it’s absolutely adorable. She also likes to show her approval of just about anything by clapping her hands or doing a funny wee scrunched up face smile! She waves bye bye, but hasn’t quite mastered the blowing kisses that I’ve been trying to teach her for a few weeks – maybe next month!
{ S U M M E R H I G H L I G H T S}
I decided this month to do a round up of our whole summer so it might be a bit photo heavy! In future I’ll just be rounding up the previous month. We had a great summer as Poppy was beginning to appreciate her surroundings a bit more, so we made the most of it with fun days out and lots of trips to the park, and time spent with her big cousins. We kicked off summer with our family holiday to Spain.
We celebrated Father’s Day with a trip to Sea Life Centre – Poppy did enough sitting in restaurants on holiday so we wanted something more fun for her!
Poppy LOVED spending time in the park and the garden – I was always worrying she would get burnt but she loved being outdoors and especially feeling a wee breeze on her face!
We then went on ANOTHER trip to Sea Life Centre with Poppy’s cousins.
Strawberry picking probably wasn’t that much fun for Poppy at the time but she definitely enjoyed eating them afterwards!
We made the proper switch to almost full time cloth bum! (I use a disposable overnight or if we’re away somewhere and I dont have a place for dirties)
Fun in the garden with her cousins at my birthday tea
We went cycling at Free Wheel north – I promise she had fun, despite the serious face!
She got a VERY early birthday present from Gran and Grandad so she could get out during the nice weather
Finding the Oor Wullies. We didn’t quite make it out to do the whole trail (every time we planned it the weather was awful) but we found a few on our travels!
First ever visit to soft play – she wasn’t quite sure what to think at first but she soon came round!
And more soft play – This is The Experience in Hillington and it’s our favourite so far!
She discovered the bunnies. And when I say discovered I mean she won’t keep away from them haha!
And last but not least, she went to her first ever dress up party! Her big cousins had a joint Football and Princess party, so Poppy went as Belle. Isn’t she adorable?
As you can see its been a fun filled summer, and Poppy’s 11th month should be just as fun as we’re off to Disneyland very soon! I’ll pop back soon with her 11 month update.
Thanks for reading (or just swooning over the cute pics if that’s all you came for, I wouldn’t blame you)!