Julia Rose at 10 Months Old

Our little Rose is just the sweetest, cutest little (well, not so little) thing you've ever seen.  This past month her personality has really been starting to shine through a lot.  She is really interacting a lot with those around her.  Many evenings when I get the girls in bed, though I feel exhausted after our long, crazy days, I just feel so completely full of love and gratitude for our two little misses and how well they played together that day that I think my heart just might burst.  I seriously cannot get enough of the two of them when they are making each other giggle nonstop with their little games.  A favorite is a game of chasing each other through the fabric tunnels or when Clara gets inside the circus tent and peeks out at Rose who laughs and laughs.  Rose also finds her daddy endlessly hilarious to play peek-a-boo with or when he pretends to drink her bottles with exaggerated gulps.  And this past month she has learned to do the actions for patty-cake on her own and especially loves throwing it in the air at the end.

 

There have been some rough days (and nights) this past month too, though.  Rose cut 3 new teeth at the same time and it was pretty miserable for her.  She now has 4 top teeth and 3 bottom teeth and I think they are still bugging her a little bit because her sleep patterns are still a little off (that, or she has just gotten used to some middle of the night cuddles with mommy).  I had my first ever disastrous airplane flights with an infant when I took Rose to Utah for a wedding while Paul and Clara stayed home.  With the teething and the poor timing of the flights (why in the world did I schedule evening flights when I knew she would be tired already and unlikely to fall asleep?!), it was pretty brutal.

But normally she is a cheerful little sprite.  I think the she loves getting kisses before bedtime (one of the little traditions we do is to carry her around to each person, including Clara, for kisses before taking her into her room to rock her).  She has started reciprocating with kisses of her own (which can be a little scary because they are usually open-mouthed and you never know if she is going to chomp down with those sharp little teeth of hers!). 

She crawls SO FAST.  It has been so much fun having her be mobile because it makes her so much happier and has opened up the world to her.  Another favorite pastime for Rose is to "catch" balls that we roll to her.  She actually has really good coordination and has got the timing down for snatching up a ball that is rolling to or past her. 

Clara loved to put leaves in her mouth.  With Rose it is paper.  She wants to chew napkins, construction paper, receipts, pages of books, grocery lists (oh my - she threw the biggest, most mortifying tantrum in the supermarket the other day because I wouldn't give her the yellow post-it that I had written my shopping list on), etc. When she got bored with this little photo shoot I bribed her with a scrap of construction paper from an art project Clara had been working on.

We recently had new French doors installed looking out onto the backyard (we're still finishing up a couple of other projects but a blog post about the house is coming soon) and Rose has really been enjoying the new view with double the window space she had before.  She usually crawls over to one particular window and stands up to look outside.  It's so darling.  Except that we are going to constantly have handprints there.  Oh well. 

Her hair is getting so thick and is starting to definitely get a little bit of a curl, which is just the cutest.  But Rose does NOT like letting me do it for her, even though she really needs it pulled back from her eyes.  So we have a battle most mornings which ends with me chasing her around trying to manipulate those tiny elastics around her wee pigtails as quickly as I can while she shakes her head "no, no, no!" (she definitely knows the meaning of shaking her head) and screeching at me.  But the moment I am done she is perfectly happy again.  She is also not overly enthusiastic about diaper changes. 

As far as eating habits go, we are really starting the transition to having her eat all regular table food instead of baby food and so far it is going pretty well.  Rose loves bready thing - muffins, cereal, bread, rice, etc.  She also seems to like meat like chicken and fish (she ate up her mahi mahi like a champ the other night).  But she was very clear that she did NOT want to eat the broccoli I gave her the other day.  We'll work on it.  She also likes grapes, apples, and pears.  Bananas, not so much so far.

 

We just adore her sweet, funny personality and love her so, so, so much.  Maybe she will start walking over this next month?  We shall see...