Silly Lauren

It seems hard to believe that Lauren is 11 months old already; in another month we'll be celebrating her first birthday. While she's become quite a speedy crawler as of late, is cruising around anything she can hold onto and is trying out new foods nearly every day, she's still so baby-like in so many ways. I think there's a part of me that wants her to stay just as sweet and happy as she is now, but there's another part of me that's ready to hear her little voice talking and watch her take those first steps. We had thought she'd be walking by now because she's been pulling herself to standing and cruising for so long, but she is just perfectly content to crawl to where she needs to go. Every once in a while I'll catch her letting go of her "hold" but the minute she realizes she standing, she sits down.

She's been enjoying getting outside for walks and play time. She looks all over as we go for our evening walks in the stroller or wagon, often clapping, waving, and smiling as we go. She wasn't too sure about the grass at first, but she's getting used to it slowly but surely. She loves to swing in her new red swing that the Easter Bunny brought her and we've even let her go down the "baby slide" a few times. She's getting into chasing or rather being chased and still loves to clap her hands when you sing and laugh at her sister.






She's now got 8 teeth, and I wouldn't be surprised if another one pops through sometime in the near future. She just chews and chews and chews, on fingers or toys or anything else she can get her hands on. We've been encouraging her to try eating more table foods and self feed, but she's not quite the eater that Alyssa was/is. She loves to self-feed starches(pastas, breads, puffs, cereals, etc.) and some veggies (green beans, sweet potatoes, peas), but she is not a fan of bananas, broccoli (throws it on the floor), shredded cheese, or little chunks of meat. She'll eat all of this when it's pureed in baby food but not when she has to chew. She even went through a phase where she's spit all of the chunks out of her baby food and just swallow the puree. We're past that now (Thank goodness!) and are just trying to encourage her to chew and eat new things. I do have to say that her favorites as of late are black beans and ice cream.

We love to watch Lauren as she explores her body. When she discovers how she can move different parts, she becomes kind of spastic at times, to the point that you might get a little concerned, but then she'll grow out of that phase and won't do the motions any more. We've gone through what we thought was her losing head control as she'd throw it forward and back, shrugging her shoulders and more. I'm including two different videos of her being somewhat goofy while eating; in one she's showing her muscles or her mean face and in the other she's shaking her head. In the one, Alyssa is chattering non-stop in the background and we're not real sure what she's saying other than every once in a while she says "My butt hanging out!" So it's not just Lauren that's silly :)