Pebble – 11 months

  Pebble is now a toddling toddler. At 10 months and 10 days old she took her first lot of steps (on my birthday, hip hip hooray for me!). Since then she has been determined to be the best walker that she can be, and even if it takes her twice as long she will walk from one end of the house to the other. I should say took her twice as long, because already she’s walking faster than she can crawl. She’s a blur of arms and legs, staggering around with her bow legged gait, always in a hurry to get to the next amazing thing in her life.

Pebble is delighting in the world around her, and particularly loves dogs. She has a little ‘woof woof’ sound that she makes whenever she hears or sees a dog. Even as she falls asleep, if she hears a dog in the distance she lets out a little ‘woof woof’ and a smile. Birds continue to be a firm favourite, she especially loves going outside with Daddy at dusk and whizzing around the back yard flapping their wings, and staring wide-eyed at the swooping cockatoos.

  Tantrums have started as well as whingeing. I’m not sure how to change the whingeing, but I’d really like to find out! How do you encourage a child from “meeeeeeehhhhhhhh, meeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhh, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” to some simple pointing and grunting, at least? Ball stuck under a table? Whinge. Can’t open your book? Whinge. Can’t make your singing teddy sing? Whinge. I’m guessing that at first this communication tool was successful for her, so she continued to use it. Recently I’ve been trying to ignore the whinge, and/or provide a different dialogue, eg. “Is your ball stuck? Please Mummy, get the ball”. I’m not sure if it’s helping, but it’s worth a try. 

  Sleep is going well. I shouldn’t really talk about it, you know that’s just the way to jinx things, but suffice to say that we’re all sleeping all night and Pebble still has two naps a day. Enjoy it while it lasts!

 

  Eating is going very well, Pebble chows down on chicken, cheese, coarsely mashed veg, any fruit that isn’t a banana (what’s with that?!), cruskits, ricotta, bread, vegemite, pasta, natural yoghurt, and most recently a little cows milk and weetbix. Oh, how very grown up! My favourite part of the eating routine is that more often than not Pebble let’s me know she’s hungry by giving me big wet sloppy kisses and cuddles. I think to myself “awwww, how sweet, she’s cuddling me…… oh wait, she’s just hungry”. Now that’s a good communication tool.

  Basically, having an 11 month old rocks (with the exception of a little whinging). Pebble cracks us up and cracks herself up. She performs for the crowd, waving, clapping, singing, dancing, sharing her toys, showing you what she’s discovered, and chatting away all the while. Each and every day only gets better, and I feel very lucky to be living this life.