Whoa, 10 Months!

At church (yet another new one we tried...) yesterday morning someone asked me how old Ellie was. I replied automatically, "9 months," and then promptly realized, no, she's actually 10 months now. This month has gone by REALLY quickly!

Each and every day Eleanor learns something new or notices something she hasn't encountered before. She's still working hard at walking and has taken many single steps as well as a few steps strung together. I wouldn't call it walking quite yet, but she's definitely stepping. :) She loves to stand by herself and still takes off as fast as her little feet can carry her when she's holding someone's hand.

Ellie loves "big girl" food and is sometimes a pain during meals now because she would really rather do it herself. Thus, we usually give her a spoon and use one ourselves. She dips her spoon in the cup and takes it either to her mouth or ours. She really loves to "feed" daddy. We give her a lot of food in small, soft chunks for her to eat with her hands and this is her favorite. She also begs for any food she sees someone "big" eating. She's recently added asparagus, onions, black beans, blueberries, pineapple, chicken and beef to her food list. She loves them all - I could hardly get a bite myself of my black bean soup the other day because she was standing at the edge of the sofa, whining for more. Last evening she enjoyed small chunks of our stew, cleaning her plate in this order: potatoes, carrots, onion, beef.

Last week the weather was so lovely (totally different from the blizzard conditions we're experiencing at the moment) that we walked, ran and played a ton outside. Eleanor enjoyed a couple of trips to some parks in town. She loved crawling her way up the big toys and sliding down the slides on my lap. She also had fun on the baby swings, riding in a bouncy red sports car and crawling around on a firetruck that wobbled to and fro.

The greatest aid to my life this last month has been Ellie's willingness to move her bedtime up an hour and thus her waking up an hour as well. This morning person of a mom is very thankful! Unfortunately, daylight savings time semi-foiled this schedule. I'll be working very hard this week to get her back to an 8:00 bed time (up to this point she's been a pretty stubborn night owl, sleeper-in like her daddy).

Probably the most fun aspect of her growing lately has been her understanding of waving hello and goodbye. She waves a lot. Sometimes it's practice and you can watch her little mind working hard while staring at her waving hand, fascinated by it's movement. Sometimes it's copying one of us as we say "bye bye" to dad in the mornings or "bye bye" to friends who come to visit. She's also started staring at the door and waving while whispering, "buh buh" on days when we haven't ventured outside for a walk, run or other outing. She'll say it over and over until we make an exit. She has also grasped the concept of saying goodbye to people well enough to wave to the clerks at the grocery store as we leave. She sticks her right hand waaay up in the air and waves her little hand while again whispering, "buh buh." Yesterday she happily waved to me as I made my way to the door for a run. In the last week she's done most of her waving unprompted and we've enjoyed watching the exent of her understanding grow.