Eleven Months Old

Today our Abby is eleven months old. I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by. I have to admit a bit of sadness at marking the last milestone before her age can be measured in years. Seeing our friends' little 2.5 week old at church yesterday made me miss my tiny Abby. I remember thinking that I never wanted to forget those times, even though the memories may be clouded by sleep deprivation. My classic-Mary-Beth nervousness about how things would go also overshadowed my enjoyment at times.

Would Abby grow & thrive? Would she sleep through the night before we totally lost our sanity? Would I survive going back to work for five months? Would she survive going to daycare? Thankfully, all those questions were answered in the affirmative. We are so grateful for God's provision & blessings in our lives. The last few months, I've been able to relax more and just enjoy Abby. The first question is particularly humorous now, given Abby's famously chubby physique. How many times have I heard "Look at those cheeks/legs/dimples!" from people we meet? I don't mind a bit (as long as they're talking about Abby, that is).

We officially retired Abby's infant car seat in mid-August. I love our newest convertible car seat but it was a bear to install and will never, ever be removed from my car until the day it needs to face forward. When I needed to loan out a car seat for Abby to ride with family members in early September, we used the infant seat one last time as Abby was just under the weight/height limits. I had to snap a picture of her squeezed into her old car seat for comparison with older pictures. She was just a tiny little pumpkin way down in the bottom of that car seat when she first came home from the hospital.

Here we are leaving the hospital when Abby was five days old. Yes, there is a baby under those blankets. Abby had to stay an extra three days in the hospital when she was born because she started out small (5 lb 11 oz) and quickly lost 7 oz. She also had trouble maintaining her body temperature, repeatedly delaying her release from the special care nursery. When I see adorable shots of onesie-clad newborns with bare legs and arms, I regret that we don't have many of those except a few bath shots. We were determined to keep that baby warm and hardly exposed more than her eyes, nose, & mouth for the first few weeks.

Here's a sleepy Abby on her way to her one-week checkup. The little crocheted hat came from the NICU. The handmade hats were accompanied by matching coverlets. The sets had been donated by a church organization. I thought the hat was tacky at first but soon grew to love just because of the association with Abby. It's already stashed in my keepsake box.

Abby scratches her head, perhaps wondering "Why am I poured into this car seat and why do you need a picture of it?"

Just a few days ago, I discovered that Abby had reached another long-awaited milestone - what I call purposeful constructive activity. In other words, she deliberately nested those red and blue cups so she could carry them in one hand and still attend to other important business like pulling up and playing with the seesaw. After months of emptying out baskets, knocking down towers, and unstacking rings as fast as I could stack them, she finally nested the little cups together on purpose!!! This has probably been going on for a week or two, but as the cups are play yard toys, I was unaware of her skill. To attain the high status of a play yard toy, the item must be interesting enough to keep Abby safely occupied in her play yard while I run downstairs with a load of laundry or perform any other task that cannot involve a crawler.

"Look Mom, I can switch hands!"

Now that Abby has mastered crawling and cruising, she feels the need to bring an item along on these missions. The nested cups are one of her favorite choices. I'm always wondering if Abby is going to inherit a lot of my quirks. Does the cup-toting mean that she'll always have to tote a purse/book bag/backpack full of goodness knows what everywhere she goes like I do??

"I'm not letting these go!"

"Uh-oh! The cups are not nesting just like I want them to."

Speaking of undesirable traits that I may have passed on, Abby is pretty easily frustrated these days as the picture above shows. I am hopeful that maybe that's normal baby behavior instead of an inherited quirk. Although she's usually delighted with an opportunity to play with paper products of any kind, she got all bent out of shape when I let her play with a mutual fund prospectus a few days ago. I think she was mad because it didn't have any pictures. Although in these times, a mutual fund prospectus could probably make a normally composed adult cry and scream in frustration as well.


On the subject of frustrations, I had a rare and brief moment of wishing to be back at work last week after a failed attempt to serve Abby's midday formula in a sippy cup. She CAN drink from a sippy cup, but had been lacking the WILL to do so as she is accustomed to guzzling water from a sippy cup and formula from a bottle. In the second picture below, she is soaking wet on her chest and her side from this fruitless session. The end result was a bath for Abby, a change of clothes for me, and a carpet cleaning session for Jonathan. (I've since revised my tactics. We've had much better luck on subsequent attempts.) After the debacle but before the clean-up, I turned the little rascal loose on the floor so I could catch my breath. She found her way into an adorable predicament that reminded me how glad I am to be at home with her.


Abby managed to get herself caged in under one of our counter stools. It was fun for a while.

She cracked me up studying the screws and touching them like she was a knowledgeable technician making an important adjustment.

But then she couldn't get out. This rail was too high to climb over. I tried to coax her to duck down and crawl out underneath but she didn't understand or appreciate the advice. I even laid my head down on the floor hoping she would copy. Well, she laughed, touched my face, and pulled my hair but made no progress toward getting out. I finally had to drag her out. She received a few minor head bumps, but that's all in day's work for Abby lately.

It was so sunny on Sunday afternoon, so I pulled back the sheers and let Abby look out the big window. It didn't take her long to start messing with the forbidden curtains. But I love this picture of her sweet little legs. Dresses are so much cuter on a standing baby. I hope to get some standing shots at her one-year-old portrait session next month.