10 months

So blogger and I are still having some differences in opinion about posting pictures--it tells me my account is full, but I have no idea how to empty it.  Can anyone else who's on blogger give me some advice on this?

Anyway, until I figure this out, it's going to be another wall of text for you guys.  So Gabby has now reached the double digits in her months.  I can't get over how much bigger she is now than when she was born.  I know that's a good thing, since we did the opposite for a while, and it was no fun at all!

She's still crawling everywhere, which kind of surprises Brian and me since we figured she'd be walking by now.  I think she can get around just fine by crawling, so she isn't going to learn to walk until she's convinced it is better.  I'm pretty sure that's going to take a while!  She is super fast when she crawls, and the cats really have to pay attention to make sure she doesn't catch them.  She still pulls to standing and takes the stairs like a pro.  Otherwise, I feel like her gross motor skills have stalled out for now.

She seems to be making up for that by improving her fine motor skills.  She now picks up puffs and Cheerios like nothing, and has graduated to apples and bananas.  She's still eating a ton of formula and baby food, since as first timers, we're very hesitant to try solid food with her.  This is compounded by the fact that when we tried solids a few months ago, she kept gagging and bringing them up.  We thought that trying the stage 3 baby food that has chunks in it would ease the transition, but she's conditioned to think that anything she receives on a spoon she can just swallow.  The results of trying stage 3 foods have been disgusting (sorry again to our friends Christina and Floyd!!), so we decided to just start giving her table food instead.  She's doing much better now than she was previously, which makes me think she just wasn't ready before.  I'm trying to expand what we give her, but it's hard sometimes, since I really don't make meat, veggie, starch separately for dinner.  What I mean is that we eat a lot of pasta (I'm hesitant to give her tomato sauce since it's so acidic), stroganoff (she doesn't need that much fat), or similar mixes of the basic food groups that are not very easy to pick apart and give to her.  I guess I'm going to have to just start making meals that I can easily cut apart and give to her.  This really sucks, since I just got a good set of meals down that I'm comfortable making, and I hate cooking!!

We're pretty sure she's said her first word!  One day she started waving and saying "bah bye", and she seems to understand that when we say bye bye to her she's supposed to wave.  So we're counting bye as her first word.  She also waves when we say hi to someone, but that's way more sporadic.  She's not perfect with saying bye--when we leave daycare, I'll tell her to say bye bye, and she usually doesn't start waving until she gets to the car!  It's so cute.  She very clearly knows a lot of other words (including Mommy, Daddy, Zoe, Dubby, sock, Christmas tree, eat, O's, nap, bottle, and probably some others I'm forgetting right now) but doesn't say them.  I think she's going to really surprise us one day and just say a bunch of words.

She and I survived Brian's first business trip earlier this week.  He went to VA to attend some meetings about the opening of a new fab there, and Gabby and I were on our own from Sunday to Wednesday.  It was so nice to be able to take her to daycare on Monday and Tuesday, since it made it much easier to be alone with her all evening.  She didn't seem to notice that he was gone, but she went right to him at the airport when we picked him up and stayed there for a long time very happily--normally she'll go to him but then immediately reach back for me to take her.  It was very sweet. 

Gabby's been waking up quite a bit more during the night than is usual.  She was definitely hungry the first few nights (making up for being sick a few weeks ago and not gaining weight, plus probably a growth spurt thrown in for good measure), but last night she was completely soaked (and cold).  I think we're going to have to go up a diaper size at night again!

We're off to St. Louis for Christmas, and I'm a little anxious about her on the plane.  She was an angel during the flights to and from LA for Thanksgiving, but those were only an hour each.  This time we have a short-ish one to Vegas, then the longer one to St. Louis.  I just hope we aren't those people--although with the holidays you have to expect a certain amount of crying babies on the plane.

I'm almost done with my classes.  We had one final last week and one today.  It's nice to have a bit of a break, although mine will be filled with (unpaid) prep work for the upcoming semester.

Hopefully blogger and I can come to terms and I can get some pictures up next time!