Three days after she turned 9 months we flew to Hawaii to visit Justin's family. Baby spent two weeks being held by grandpa and grandma, pointing to dogs, pointing to auntie and uncles, and trying lots of new foods. It was a long overdue vacation as we hadn't been out to visit his family since Christmas 2010! It was really great, but much too short when you only see your family every 2 years. Maybe someday we will love closer.
Unfortunately 97% of our pictures are of Baby which we can't post. But you get the idea. Amazing scenery. Amazing people.
Baby has been soaking up the world like a sponge. We've only just begin to discover how smart she is! She learns something new almost every day. In Hawaii we were so amazed when we pointed out a clock in the airport and then showed her one in the house and then the next day we asked her where the clock was and she pointed right to it!
She can point to her head, point to someone else's nose, identifies all sorts of objects around the house by pointing after we name them, points to things she wants, gives kisses, waves on command, rolls a ball back and forth, pushes buttons on command, dances on command, gives high fives. She plays peek-a-boo now by turning her head to hide her face and then turns around really fast! She is at the stage now where we can tell her a word and she will remember it! She can identify things I didn't even know she knew. Her receptive vocab is already over 25 words that we know of and growing every day. The other day we were reading a book and I told her to point to the baby not expecting her to be able to do it as we never taught her what a baby is. But right away she pointed to the baby!
In the past month she also learned how to sign 'milk'. Then all of a sudden in the past week we have seen a signing explosion! One day I told her it was time for her bath and she immediately signed 'bath'! We were so surprised as we do not sign bath consistently for bath time. We were even more surprised when I told her it was time to brush her teeth and she signed toothbrush. I thought it must be a fluke and she probably just wanted to chew on her finger. The next day when I told her it was time to brush her teeth she signed toothbrush again! She does it every time we say it! This little girl is amazing. We had a baby bedtime signs book from the library. We read it for like a week. Then we returned it. We never practiced it after that. A week after we returned it is when she started signing toothbrush. She is on the verge of signing sleep, book, eat, and diaper and can sign them partially. She also now signs 'more' by touching her index fingers together instead of clapping her hands like she used to. She also one time verbally said 'ma' instead of signing 'more'. Coincidence, I'm not sure... These things are all just within the past 4 days! (except signing bath).
She is so clever. You can just see those little wheels turning in her head as she watches everything. Often she just likes to point to things so you can name them. Almost like she is just trying to discover as much as possible. She continues to match pictures in books by pointing to one picture with one finger and the other same picture with her other finger. We read a Dora book one day and I'm not sure it's what I think but we got to a page that had the same picture as the cover and she immediately closed the book and really studied the front cover hard as if to say 'hey, this is the same'. Then she kept wanting to flip back and forth. I'm not sure my assumption is correct here either, but I wouldn't doubt it if it were - we were looking at a book and I told her to point to the bumblebee and her head snapped up and she reached for her book in which the only picture she will point to (because she is so excited about it and everything else pales in comparison) is the bumblebee. It could just be coincidence, but I know her memory is amazing.
On Baby's 10 month birthday she started cruising on the furniture. Hooray Baby! Now a few days ago I had given up on the idea that she was going to crawl. She was never on all fours. Rarely made attempts to get on all fours. If something was out of her reach she would either just cry or roll to it. On her 10 month birthday Justin and I were eating our dinner on the floor with Baby. She saw Justin's bowl and much to our surprise she just got up on all fours and proceeded to crawl over to it! She is now a pro at cruising around the house. I think she will be walking soon. She can walk using just one hand to hold on to ours. Today she stood alone for almost 2 minutes! Her previous record was on Monday when she stood alone for 15 seconds.
She loves to play "I'm gonna get you!". She will stop what she is doing and scream in excitement. She will then sign 'more'. Such a cutie pie! The other most exciting thing that she does is sleep through the night consistently! This is the best milestone ever! She had been waking up again for 2 hour periods during the night when we were in Hawaii and when we got home, and she was awful to put down. Then we decided that was quite enough of that and no longer went in to pat and 'comfort' her. In 2 or 3 days she was sleeping like a dream.
Baby has another court date at the end of this month. After this court date she will begin unsupervised home visits and that is the last step before reunification. We aren't sure how long this process will take, but we know we'll have her through her first birthday.
The end.
