11 Months and Growing

Weight: 18 pounds (and she can use all of them)

We are one month away from the one year mark and we cannot be enjoying this time more. Camryn's personality has developed and unfortunately it appears as if she inherited both of her parents' stubborness (what Scott and I stubborn?? NEVER!!)

I thought she would be walking by now. She cruises around the furniture well and pushes her toys all over (well until they crash into a wall); however, the little sticker will pick her legs up off the ground if you try to put her down standing up. Oh well!! It will happen when it is supposed to happen. Occasionally, she will take a few steps toward something before lowering herself to her knees. Her daycare caregivers say she isn't going to walk but run.

The differences in her tempermant between daycare and home are amusing to say the least. At home, when she is in her high chair and eating, if she does not want a particular food item or her sippy cup she will put it in her right hand and drop it off the right hand side of her chair. Does she do this at daycare - - - Nooo! At least not until the other morning when I put her in her chair and gave her sippy and she dropped it off the side. The caregiver said, "Now that's the first time she has done that." Then, just today I picked her up just when her nap was over. Was she standing up in her crib? - yes - Was she crying bloody murder? - NO- They even say that she will play in her crib. (At daycare she does not have toys in her crib unlike here!!!) Oh well, I guess every parent's hope is that his/her child behaves better when away from his/her parents.

One thing Camryn is attempting to master is climbing. It started with conquering the stairs over Christmas. A few weeks ago she decided to crawl into her rocking chair and stand-up looking over the back of her chair. She tries to crawl into her toy basket. At daycare she pushes the little chairs by the table and attempts to crawl on the table. When she is on the couch with mom and dad she crawls over to the end table and tries to crawl over it and over the box on top of it. With all this attempted climbing she is lucky there has been limited to no injury.

I haven't posted a video in awhile and I promise I will do it soon because I do have a few to share.

All Work and No Play

So I don't think I have posted anything about us working on the basement. Finally, It feels like it is nearing completion. My Grandpa Bob helped us every step of the way and taught Scott alot.

Last weekend was probably the most frustrated we have been during our basement finishing. Scott's parents came up to help us prime the drywall. We thought we were all set since we had borrowed a paint sprayer from our contractor. We should have thought differently when we saw pink congealed paint oozing from the hose.

But that didn't deter us. We spent probably a good 4 hours and 2 trips to home depot attempting to fix the sprayer before I broke down and told Scott to rent one. Then, due to our inability to read instructions we neglected the information that the drywall primer required thinning. Well, it really needed to be thinned down. All of our patience was tried but in the end I think we finished by 2 p.m. the following day.

Most recently, Scott and Grandpa worked on the tile. Grandpa did the bathroom and in front of the door.
While Scott tiled the bar area.




In the meantime, Camryn had a blast playing with her Aunt.

Happy Valentine's Day

Laundry

One of Miss Camryn's favorite things to do is help Mom and Dad with the laundry. Well, maybe not so much help but empty the basket of dirty clothes, empty the dryer of wet clothes, empty the clean clothes onto the dirty floor. Oh not to forget to mention that she eats her socks.

She likes the ride in the laundry basket. It is probably the most still she stays (the minute it takes to walk from our bedroom to the laundry room and the 30 seconds from the laundry room to the living room).

Now if I can just teach her to fold!!

10 Months . . . Getting Big but still Little

Height: 26 inches Weight: 16 pounds (still)

I can't believe what a peanut Camryn is. I find myself wishing she was bigger. Probably so it would look like 10 months has gone by. She is a very active 10 month old. The only time she sits still is to eat and when she is playing in the dog's water/food dish. It does not matter how much Camryn eats she always has room for dog food. Scott is bothered by this, I don't mind.

Cam's active phase consists of knocking anything down, taking it off, or taking it out. If I open a dresser drawer all of her clothes are out of it within 2 minutes. Her new favorite thing to remove items from is the dishwasher. She loves removing the silverware. But now, she insists on crawling in the dishwasher so she is no longer allowed to help with the dishwasher. Also, she is a great helper when it comes to her diapers, too bad she can't stuff them!!!
She is thrilled to be able to open our cabinets. Her favorite (until we locked it) was the one under the kitchen sink. Grandma Julie recommended putting rubber bands around the knobs to lock. The rubber bands have been on for a week and Camryn is still mad. I don't know why, she never removed anything from that cabinet.
Her other favorite cabinet is our bathroom cabinet. Everything needs to come out and then she crawls in and tries to take out the items she could not reach in the back.

Camryn's other favorite activity is pushing her push toys or just pushing her toys around the room until they hit a wall. She hasn't figured out how to steer yet but it is coming. With all the assisted walking she is doing she has started refusing to walk if we hold on to her. She will pick her feet off the ground and try to sit down if we want her to walk without a toy in front of her. In addition she has become quite adept at climbing. That all started with the stairs during Christmas. Now she climbs up the arm of our couch onto the coffee table and tries to get the box off of the coffee table. What a little monkey!!

Christmas Part 4

Finally, after the holiday rush we were able to make the trek up to Wisconsin to visit Scott's extended family for the first time since Camryn entered our world. Great-Grandma Nicholson was thrilled to see Cam. Whenever Camryn traveled out of view, Great-grandma needed to see her and make sure Cam was still there. Great-grandma was willing to share her chocolates with Camryn.
Scott was treated to a preview of what is to come with his cousin's 2 1/2 year-old daughter, Isabella. She was a bundle of energy that just kept going. Scott was amazed by this. I deal with this everyday at work so it came as no surprise to me. (Sometimes, ok most of the time, I don't think Scott knows how exhausting my job can be. Typically, my days consist of dealing with energizer bunnies who don't want to talk and I want them to).

The next day we visited the Wagner side of the family. Camryn enjoyed Uncle Chuck and Aunt Brenda's house for the fact that it had plenty of ledges to pull herself up on. In addition, all of those ledges had something to pull off of them.

While we do enjoy visiting family traveling with a small child is not fun. Camryn's breaking point generally sets in at about 3 hours. I know we are blessed that it is even that long. I do not enjoy all of the packing that has to be done when we travel. I can handle the clothes. The bigger obstacle is the food.

We started on some table foods but are limited by Camryn's lack of teeth. Not to mention the fact that she is trying to be a picky eater. Pretty much anything orange is ok (except for carrots) and definitely not anything green. That was one advantage of breastfeeding! We never had to worry if we would have enough food or if she was going to like it. Camryn's favorite food (besides puffs, but I don't count that as food) is yogurt. Even when she had the bad stomach bug over Christmas she would not give up her yogurt.