Gracie is 10 Months Old

Last week, Gracie was 10 months old. She is so much fun now, such a ham. I feel like I'm always saying how crazy she is...but not necessarily in a bad way. She is just SOOOO busy. I've honestly never seen a baby that is so, all over the place. She constantly climbs, squirms, falls, reaches, kicks, stretches, wants up, then down...it is to the absolute extreme.

Gracie's fine motor skills are progressing well. She is able to use utensils well, and just started trying to put the food on the fork herself. She is very good with her cup now, so we are working on getting rid of the bottle.

The biggest leaps over the past month, have come in her ability and desire to get up and go. She started cruising along furniture, loves pushing her walker wagon up and down the sidewalk, and this week realized that she can walk holding only one hand. Gracie can also climb up and down the stairs. She initiated the up part and perfected it very quickly. Getting back down is taking a little coaxing on our part. She was scared at first, then progressed to being willing but would sit rather than scoot on her belly (which of course resulted in tumbling down backwards (we were always there to keep her from actually doing that), and now she has figured out how to get her feet out of the way and scoot. It's still a work in progress. She is so strong and determined, that I think she'll really be walking in the next month or so.

While we are better able to communicate with her, Gracie still doesn't really say any meaningful words consistently and pretty much refuses to use signs, though she understands many of them. She likes to communicate by waving, clapping, and of course yelling. I'm working on the concept of inside voices, but based on her lack of cooperation, I have a feeling we're in for yelling for quite some time. I'm not sure how we ended up with such a loud baby, but she gets her point across for sure.

Sleep is difficult too. While she sleeps okay at night, she really disagrees with the idea of napping. So in the early evening hours, Gracie is very cranky. We're working on this too.