During Maya's 11th month (late May to mid June), she's really improved her walking skills a lot. For a while now, she had been stuck on just making 1 or 2 steps at a time, and never did any more than that. One day, Christina was about to leave the house and I was holding Maya. She seemed like she wanted to go see Chris, so I stood her on the floor, completely expecting her to drop to her hands and knees and crawl. However, before I knew it, she took 4 steps forward before falling.
That achievement was just the beginning. While Chris was gone, I got Maya to take 3 more steps. Two days later, she took 4 steps again. The next day it was up to 6 step (and she could do 2-4 steps regularly). The day after she was up to 8 step (and 4-6 steps regularly). Then the next day it 10 steps.
After that, we just sort of stopped counting. She might have made it a step or 2 further a few times, but in general she seemed to max out at around 10 steps. Once she got that far, she'd either tend to fall down, or she'd reach an object and sit down, or she'd be at a piece of furniture to hold onto. So she could regularly walk these short distances, but wasn't quite yet doing any little walking marathons.
Maya also did a ton of climbing this month. She climbed up the baby gate on many occasions, but still hasn't yet made it over (thankfully).
Maya got to take her first swim in the pool. She really loves splashing away. She also had her first bike ride. We bought one of those baby trailers to tow behind our bikes. She really seems to love going for a ride, though she tends to fall asleep after not too long.
Also this month, Maya got her 5th tooth and she finally weighed over 18 pounds.
During Maya's 10th month (late April to mid May), she's really shown herself to be an adventurous little climber. For a while now, we've seen her climb on top of all of her toys, and now she climbs on nearly everything she can get at...standing on boxes and toys, trying to reach on top of tables and shelves, etc. Then she took it to a whole new level.
First, she showed that she can climb into the tub. As I mentioned, she likes to play with her bath toys at the edge of the tub, but one day she dropped a toy into the bath tub. The next thing I knew, she was leaning into the tub trying to grab the toy, pulling herself up and tring to climb with her feet, and then suddenly she went in head first. Luckily I was there to catch her by her ankle so that she didn't actually land headfirst. But after this event, the climbing was just beginning.
A few weeks later, when Bob & Amanda were over with the kids, we were all in the basement. We were playing pool, and the kids were playing with toys, so we let Maya crawl around on the carpet. Then Amanda went up the stairs and then without hesitation, Maya started following right after her. Instead of stopping her, we wanted to see what she could do. She managed to make it all the way from the bottom to the top of the stairs without stopping or falling, and although we were ready to catch her, she didn't actually need any support to make it up.
As if climbing the stairs wasn't bad enough, the very next day, I walk into the hallway and see maya climbing up her baby gate. There she is, 6 inches off the ground, with her feet in the holes of the gate. She didn't make it anywhere near close enough to getting herself over, but I have a feeling it won't be long.
Aside from her climbing, Maya got much better at standing. As I mentioned last time, we were having an ongoing competetion to see how long we could get Maya to stand, and her record was up to 18 seconds. However, early on this month, she managed to nearly double that record, standing for an entire 32 seconds. After this, we sort of just gave up on tracking that record, as it was now clear that her standing ability was no longer limited by her balance, but rather by how long she had an interest in remaining standing. If she wanted to stand for a minute straight, she could do it (and although we didn't time it, there have been several times when she stood for at least that long).
On the walking front, she hasn't made much progress in terms of number of steps. She still pretty much limited to 1 or 2 little stumble steps before she falls down. However, she now takes these little steps much more frequently.
Maya's starting to eat a lot more regular foods. She's had egg, cheese, chicken, and even a little bit of ground beef (though she didn't particular care for that one). One day, we made an English roast with potatoes and carrots, and for the first time, Maya ate the exact same dinner that we ate.
For quite a while, we've been trying to get Maya to wave. Although sometimes she would seem to do it, it's always hard to tell for sure if she actually meant to or it was coincidence. However, one day we were standing outside with Maya inside the house looking out the Window, and we managed to get her to wave to us 4 or 5 different times.
As far as weight & height, she's was just a hair over 28" tall, and about 17.5 lbs at the end of the 10th month.
Also this month, Maya celebrated her first Easter and went on her first Easter egg hunt. She also got her first real bath in the bathtub (instead of the baby tub or the bath seat). She learned how to open the drawers on her dresser and pull out her clothes. And she learned how to get behind the recliner (we had blocked it off) to get at the books we were hiding back there (since she likes to eat them).
During Maya's 9th month (late March to mid April), she's been doing really great. After the last several months of mastering her crawling skills and her ability to stand while holding things, now she's working on standing freely and walking. Our latest game is to see who (Christina or I) can get Maya to stand on her own (unassisted) the longest. I initially set the record with 5 second, then before Christina could break that, I got Maya to stand for 11 second. Shortly after, Christina got Maya to stand for 15 seconds. That record lasted for almost the entire month, but finally I got Maya to stand for 18 seconds.
Aside from the standing, Maya has also taken her first stumble steps. They were little more than moving her foot forward while on her way to quickly falling over, but it's a start
Maya is now up to having 4 teeth. After her bottom 2 teeth came in a several months ago, this month her 2 top teeth came in (top left first, then top right). And speaking of teeth, Maya's now getting to use them a bit more on some real food, like baked potatoes and avocado. However, she's learned to use her teeth for more than just chewing. One time when I was feeding her, I started hearing an odd noise. Quickly I figured out the noise was her grinding her teeth (see video below). The other thing she's doing with them is excessive biting. Apparently she has no reservations about biting the hands that feeds her.
We went through a period of about a week where she woke up in the middle of the night almost every night. Before that week, it was very rare for her to do so. However, after about a week, her nighttime waking disappeared and she returned to her regular routine of sleeping through the night.
Maya's become really excited about bath time and playing with her toys. We now often find her wandering into the bathroom on her own to try and play with her bath toys, which we leave sitting on the side of the tub.
Maya's been getting a lot more vocal lately, making lots of various noises. Sometimes this will just be in the form of her babbling on and on and on. Other times, you will notice that she's getting good at making sounds that start to resemble actual words (see the talking while eating video below).
Maya is also picking up new tricks quickly. We have a couple of those little touch sensitive lamps (where you tap the metal base to turn it on/off). Christina demonstrated how to touch it to turn it on and off. Since then, Maya often goes over to the lamp and touches it over and over again. Next, she learned that if she presses the buttons on my clock radio, she can turn on the radio and get music. She's done this many times. The downside to this is she sometime hits the buttons that adjust the time, and one day I found myself waking up about 10 minutes too early because of it (though I guess better early than late). Now I need to check my clock carefully every night before I go to bed.
Finally, the stranger anxiety Maya's been displaying the last couple months has been going away, and she's been happy and friendly to almost everyone, and pretty much never cries around someone new anymore.
About 27 seconds into the video, you'll hear Maya grinding her teeth together (don't get it mixed up with the banging sound just a few seconds earlier).
Maya dancing while Mommy sings (8.5 months old)
Maya like to rock back and forth to music and singing.
Maya getting her teeth brushed (8.5 months old)
Maya eating (8.5 months old)
Maya in front window - hits herself and cries (8.5 months old)
When I come home from work, Maya often greets me happily at the front window. This time, however, she got a little too excited while holding a toy.
Maya eats avacados and sounds like she talks (8.5 months old)
While eating avacados for the first time, at about 45 seconds into this video, Maya says something that sounds like "I like it", and then when I asked her if she likes it, she says something that sounds like "Yeah I do".
Maya playing with her spoon (8.5 months old)
Maya climbing on laundry basket to get DVD (9 months old)
For a while now, Maya has been pulling DVDs off of the shelf every chance she get. Sometimes we wouldn't feel like putting them back over and over again, so we'd try to block the shelf off. However, this attempt at using a laundry basket didn't turn out to be the best idea.
During Maya's 8th month (late Feb to mid March), she started to become a lot more active. After starting to crawl last month, she really mastered it this month, and has started to explore the whole house. Before, she confined herself to the living room at first, and then slowly explored the rest of the house. Now, she is so comfortable going from room to room that you can put her in one room and in 10 seconds she'll be 2 rooms away. When she really want's to be somewhere, she can get there almost as fast as you can. This month she really liked playing in her bedroom.
The previous month, Maya was pulling herself up and standing by other objects from time to time. By her 8th month, she was doing it all the time, everywhere she could get. Only now she wasn't just standing to stand, but she was doing it to get whatever she could reach on a table, bookshelf, the entertainment center, etc. First it started by grabbing video games off the entertainment center. Then it was grabbing remotes, papers, etc off of the end table. Later it was pulling as many dvds off the shelf as possible and making an absolute mess. As quickly as you could put them away, she'd pull just as many off. It didn't take long for us to give up on trying to keep the DVDs in alphabetical order.
Also, on the topic of standing, not only had Maya gotten good at pulling herself up and standing along object, but she's started to develop the balance and strength to hold herself up unsupported. In the week before she turned 8 months old, she started to stand up for 1 or 2 seconds on her own. You would have to stand her up and get her balanced just right, but she could do it.
Of course, as good as she became at standing and crawling, she also now had become a very good sitter. It's sort of funny that it really took her longer to master sitting than it did crawling or standing.
Maya started to eat her first real foods (as opposed to baby food) this month. The first one for her to tackle was bananas. We first just mashed up small pieces with our fingers and let her chew on it. Then we switched to mashing it up with a fork, mixing it with some rice or oatmeal, and making that an entire meal. She loved the flavor immediately, but she had a little trouble with the texture at first. However, by the second time she had it for a meal, she seemed to do alright with it.
Maya broke the 16 lbs mark this month, dropping her to just below the 25th percentile. Her height at the 8 month old mark was, for the third month in a row, 27 inches tall. We had to have over-measured in one of the previous months.
I installed a baby swing in the basement this month, and Maya really loves to swing in it. She's not freaked out by really big swinging motions either. It seems she loves the excitement of it (just like she loves when I toss her in the air and catch her).
In Maya's crib, we've given her a couple of toys to play with and snuggle with: her puppy dog Ikea (named after the store he came from), and her glow-seahorse (like a glow-worm). The glow-seahorse lights up and plays music when you squeeze the tummy. A few times, we've turned it on when putting her to be and let it soothe her to sleep. However, on one occasion, she turned it on by herself. I woke up early in the morning (maybe 5am...I don't recall for sure) and heard the seahorse playing. I went in there and she was snuggled up to it, staring at it, making a little bit of noise. She soon went back to sleep.
Finally, this month Maya developed a few new humorous traits. First, she often pants when she get excited. Second, she loves to play in and destroy paper. If you lay a stack of papers on the floor, she'll crawl over and make an absolute mess of it all.
Although I posted the army-crawling version of this in the 7 month blog, I thought I'd post the updated version with her really crawling.
Maya playing in her room (8 months old)
This video is a bit longer than the others I've previously posted. While it might not have the same sort of humorous moments the other videos do, this one captures the general idea of her playing in her room by herself and how she keeps herself entertained.
During her 7th month (late January to mid February), Maya got to try a lot of new foods. She had a variety of new baby foods. We gave her oatmeal, juice, and puffies for the first time. Also, she finally switched completely to formula (after we finished our last bag of frozen breast milk).
After her weight had kind of plateaued during the last few weeks, she started growing again (though at a slower rate than her first 5 months), and ended up at 15.75 lbs at the end of month 7. Between 5 and 7 months, she fell from the 50th percentile in weight down to the 25th percentile. Her height stayed about the same at 27", putting her closer to average height (vs early on, when she was up around the 95th percentile). However measuring height is tricky for a baby, and we may have under-measured this month, or over-measured last month.
Maya started to get around a lot more this month. Whereas before, she had been pseudo-crawling (aka, the army crawl...dragging herself with her arms), this month she finally started real crawling on her hands and knees. It was pretty tough at first, taking her forever to make a tiny bit of forward progress. For a while she switched back and forth between army crawling and real crawling. However, it didn't take her long to start getting better (though she probably didn't really master it until during her 8th month).
Now that she could crawl better, she started to get more adventurous, exploring different rooms of the house (previously, she never left the living room on her own). With her crawling around a lot more, she started to get into more trouble. We'd always find her in the cat bed, the kitchen shelves, the bathroom, or somewhere else she didn't belong. She even managed to get her hands on an old, spongy cat ball and bite a chunk out of it. Thus it was time to really clean things up and take baby proofing the house a bit more seriously.
Along with her new crawling ability, Maya also got quite good at climbing up things into a semi-standing position. She'd use anything she could grab to try and pull herself up. She learned she could stand up at the front picture-window (which is less than a foot off the ground) and look outside. This soon became one of her favorite things to do. Of course, with all of the standing came the start of lots of falling. She hit her head often, but she's a pretty tough baby, and barely ever cried about it. And of course, with her now standing up, we had to drop her crib to the bottom setting to make sure she couldn't climb out.
One of Maya's new favorite activities became riding on her dinosaur (which is sort of like a bike...see below). I'd sit her on hit and she'd grab the handle bars and hold on while I pushed her around the house
Previously, whenever we went shopping, we just left Maya in her car seat and put it in the basket. This month, for the first time, we took her out of her car seat and let her ride in the shopping cart's kid seat. It's a little tricky at first, since she's so small, the cart is so big, and often the cart's seat belt isn't all that useful. It can be hard at first to keep her steady in there, but she soon got used to it, and before long she wouldn't want to go back in her car seat when we finished shopping.
Finally, Maya started to display a bit of stranger anxiety this month (which is normal at about this age). Before, she really wouldn't care who held her, but now she'd sometimes cry when seeing someone new (or even someone she hadn't seen in a few weeks). I took her shopping once and stepped just a few feet away to get some produce. Another guy came up and got between us, and she started crying.
So it's been another 3 months and I'm behind again. A lot has gone on these last 3 months, but I never seem to get around to posting stuff here. And then it seems the further I get behind, the more difficult it is to catch up. Over the next week, I'm gonna try to catch up by each day posting a little bit of info and pictures from the last 3 months. Today, I'll start where I left off: with Maya's 6 months photos, and a bit of info about when she came down with hives.
6 Month Family Photos
Just like when she turned 3 months old, we wanted to commemorate the occasion by dressing her up and taking some nice posed photo. Also, since we hadn't really done any nice family photos yet, Christina and I dressed up too.
Hives
It was only about a week after Maya turned 6 months (end of January). We went out shopping for a couple of hours. Since it was winter, we had Maya bundled up pretty good. While we were out, she fell asleep in her car seat, so we just let her sleep. When we got home and she woke up, we got her out of the seat and took off her jacket. It was then that I noticed some small red bumps on her tummy. We figured it was just heat rash from being bundled up so good for so long, and within an hour or two it went away, so we figured we were right.
Later that evening, we went to change her diaper, and this time we saw a lot more spots had shown up all around her tummy, and this time just barely spreading onto her legs and arms.
At this point were were wondering what the cause was. Heat rash? Reaction to detergent in clothing? Something to do with a change in her diet? All were possible, but they each didn't quite seem to fit for one reason or another. Still, it didn't really seem like a very serious situation, so we figured nothing to be alarmed about. She wasn't crying, itching, running a fever, or showing any other sort of symptoms. She was behaving completely normally. We figured we'd give her a bath (just in case it was something like a detergent reaction or some other allergen on her skin).
By the next morning, her rash was almost completely gone...just a few little pink spots left. So we went on with the day. Then in the middle of the afternoon, suddenly her rash started coming back. This time it was much worse than before, covering almost her entire body. About the only spot not affected was her face. The spots were now becoming puffy, and some of them were white in the center (almost like giant blisters).
We called the pediatrician via the 24 hour on-call service (it was Sunday). After explaining everything to him and answering his questions, he said it didn't sound like anything to be concerned about, and if it was still there on Monday, we could schedule an appointment.
By the following morning, everything was completely gone. She had not even the slightest sign of the rash, so we didn't make an appointment. When I came home for lunch, she was still fine. Just before I left back for work, she had one small little pimple like bump on her face. Not long after that, it began spreading across her face.
We made an appointment with the pediatrician that day. When he saw it, he said it was nothing to be concerned about. It was Urticaria (a.k.a. hives). He said it could have been any of numerous things that caused it, but most likely was a virus, and it would likely clear itself up within a week. Later that day, the rash spread across more of her head. In addition, she had some swelling below her eye and on the back of her head. I did some research and found that the swelling is called Angioedema, and it often occurs in conjunction with Urticaria.
Swelling at the back, lower portion of her head
Swelling below her eye
By the next day, the rash was once again gone. However, this time it never came back again.
Next Up
As I sit here finishing this blog entry, realizing that it's taken me over 3 hours to write in between taking care of an unusually cranky baby today (she has a cold), I'm remembering why it's been so difficult to keep up on this. However, tomorrow I should be able to post a summary from the rest of month 7.
Here are the videos of Maya from ages 3-6 months I promised in my last post.
Maya's first tub bath (3 months old)
Up until now, when we washed Maya we put her in a bath chair and sprayed her, so it was more like a shower. This is her first time being submerged in water, and she definitely enjoyed it
Maya sucking on Christina's chin (3 months old)
Maya talking to the mirror (3.5 months old)
Maya walking in her walker (4 months old)
We put Maya in her walker in the kitchen, where it could roll much easier. She had been able to turn it slightly before, but this is the first time she managed to push her way forward.
Maya's first trip to a restaurant (5 months old)
Although she couldn't eat the food yet, she certainly tried. This short video was captured on accident...we intended to take a photo but had the camera on the wrong setting. Normally I'd just delete this, but I loved Maya's tongue expression.
Maya crawling for her toys (5.5 months old)
The very first time Maya did any sort of crawling, I watched for for the first few movements, then ran to get the video. However, by then she had tired herself out and I didn't get much. However, the next day we got her to do the same thing, and this time I got a pretty good video of it.
