Ten Months!

It's true! As of yesterday, the Baby Kumquat is 10 months old! Cr-azy. What's also crazy is all the stuff she's started doing in the last few weeks. Let's see if I can hit some highlights:

• She is a signing machine! I love it. She started signing "milk" almost as soon as we began doing the sign language thing when she was around 7 mos. It took a while for many others to catch on, but now she's all over it. Some of the ones she uses often (that I've recognized, anyway) are: "more," "all done," "fish," "ball," "shoe," "hat," "dog," "wash hands," and "dad."
  
  
• She's talking more and more every day. It's funny to me how she gets and loses words. She'll start with a new word and use it regularly, but then stop for a while. Over the past few weeks, she's used "duck," "dog," "cat," "uh-oh," "bye," "mama," and "dada."
  
  
• She's all over the place, too. She has gotten super quick with her crawling - and she's now doing a more traditional right-left crawl rather than her earlier inchworm moves. She pulling up and cruising all over the house. She seems to have lost interest in walking for the moment, but I have a feeling that won't last for long. She used to take a few steps if I held her hands. Now she usually just sits down. She has stood for a few seconds without any support a few times, too!
  
  
  Oh, and she's a dancing queen, too.
  
  
  
• She eats so well. I'm very lucky that she's been pretty open to most everything I've tried giving her. She definitely does not prefer the green veggies, but she'll eat them if I'm persistent. She totally ♥'s cheese. It's basically her favorite thing ever. She recently has decided that she would much rather feed herself than wait for her mama to feed her mush with a spoon. Oh, and she's quite generous. She's more than happy to share her puffs with me.
  
  
• She's still a great traveler, although I think our recent trip to and through South Dakota may have traumatized her just a bit. She was awesome on the trip, but for about a week, she cried every time we put her in her carseat. Hopefully she'll get over that soon. Her summer has included trips to SD, TN, Las Vegas, and MO. Busy girl! I recently counted them up and realized Baby K will be in at least 11 states by her first birthday. Now that's crazy!
  

I've always been fascinated by people's thought processes (part of why I became a counselor), so that's exponentially true for my daughter. I love that she's signing & talking more because I've been able to have more insights into how she's beginning to understand the world. It truly amazes me how much babies pick up. Yesterday we were singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (yep, she does motions for it - oh, and she claps & waves now, too!) she signed "wash hands" when I said, "washed the spider out." Impressive, no?

Funny story... When we were in SD, Baby K was able to say "cat" and she used it both for my bro's kitties and for her own stuffed kitty. When we came home, though, she seemed to forget that those critters are "cats" and started calling ours "dog." Given Connor's size and mass, it's a totally understandable mistake. I've been trying to correct her when she calls them dog, though. It happens often.
The other day, she pointed to Connor and said "Dog."
I said, "No, Baby. He's a cat."
K looked at me like I clearly was insane and signed "hat."
"No, Baby. Not 'hat.' Connor's a 'cat.'"
"Dog," said K, as she signed "hat."

So, that's our "cat" for now. A dog who wears a hat.