Stella 10 Months

Stella meets Stella the dog

Shredding paper. She's good at that!

When she wasn't trying to eat all of the rocks

When you fight sleep, you crash hard in your carseat

Always in the middle of the chaos

Those eyes....

Stella,

Although I'm a little (lot) late this month, I'm glad to be finally getting to this. I want to track and remember the new things you do every month and know if forget without writing it all down. You're changing so much and it's hard to believe the teeny baby you were just a few months ago. You're officially crawling everywhere and pulling to stand on everything. You're in constant motion and love being a part of everything your sisters do. You're about 14 pounds now and still not sleeping great. We have you in your crib for at least the first part of most nights. The second half really depends. We think your top teeth have been bothering you. Nothing is thru yet, but hopefully soon you'll get some relief. You're really showing us you're understanding so much more and waving, clapping, and using a few signs (more, all done). You love to eat and will try almost anything. We're concerned you might have some kind of intolerance to potato as you've had a few vomiting incidents after eating them. We will see the GI dr about it next month. You're so happy and busy and want to be in the middle of everything. You love your dogs and will squeal with delight when you see the cat. You're getting over your stranger anxiety and have been much friendlier with others. You babble a lot and really only want to nap in your car seat. I joke that it's good you're so cute, because I'm exhausted by you. Even if I am exhausted, I can't picture our family without you in it. You're such a sweet and smart little girl. I love you Ms Stella! 

"Hi"

Clara has been crawling up a storm. We first got excited when she crawled across a room. Now she is effortlessly crawling out of rooms and around the house. She really is proud of herself. 

My mom came over the other day and I was upstairs with the girls in their room. When my mom called upstairs to see where we were Clara started crawling towards the top of the stairs, shrieking both with excitement and to tell my mom where she was. It was so cute! 

Lucy, on the other hand, is doing a lot of sitting around. It really stinks that she has to watch her sister move and learn to crawl while she stays confined to her cast and bouncy seat, beanbag, bumbo, etc. On a positive note, she's been tolerating being on her tummy more and is trying to roll and move around in her crib. She grabs onto the crib rails and throws her body around. Every night when we put her down to bed she does around 45 minutes of acrobatics instead of trying to sleep. I love to watch on the monitor. 

The positive to Lucy not being able to focus much on motor developments is that she has been focusing a lot instead on her communication. 

She's been using sign language to communicate "please" for most of the summer, but neither Lucy or Clara had said their "first word" until the other night. Lucy had finished her sponge bath and she was looking in the mirror with daddy waving as he said hi when she also said "hi". It was so cute and I even got it on video. Since then she's been imitating animal sounds like crazy (she'll meow like a kitty, pant like a dog, growl like a lion, and baa like a sheep). She's also tried to say our dog Pepper's name multiple times. As a speech pathologist you can imagine I get pretty excited about this stuff. 

Every day just gets better and better with these girls. They are growing and learning so much every day and I love watching them explore and master new things. 

Today we celebrate their birthday with a big birthday bash. Although this mama invited way too many people, it's going to be so fun to celebrate that we all survived the first year of their lives.