Anna – 10 months old

It has been another amazing month witnessing how quickly she is growing.

Anna has mastered pulling herself to the stand-up position using the activity cube. As soon as she sees the cube, she grabs the metal bars with the beads on the top to pull herself up. She doesn’t seem to mind dropping her bottom on the floor again and again. But she hasn’t tried to pull herself up along the furniture yet.

She has become more ‘mobile’ even though there is no sign of crawling. When she is on her tummy, she can move backwards and turn around very fast. She pushes her bottom up into the crawling position for a few seconds and then slide backwards. Even now when she sits up, she can change the position slowly by leaning the upper part of her body forwards and then move her legs and bottom after.

It is so sweet watching her play with her toy car. I just bought her a car a few days ago. When Simon played with her, he moved the car around and made the ‘brm brm’ engine noise. Soon after that we noticed she made the ‘brm brm’ sound too while moving the car around. She learned fast! She can also play with the xylophone now. She doesn’t know yet how to hold the stick properly, but she can bang it on the xylophone to make sounds. She uses the stick to bang the drum too. Another game she likes to play is to sit in the walker and drop the balls into the ball pit. I leave her in the walker sometimes if I need time to cook dinner. She still loves my phone and laptop. Whenever I’m nearby on phone or laptop, she lunges to grab them.

It is lovely to see how interactive she is with Mummy and Daddy. Last week she and Simon played the giving and receiving game. When Simon gave her the little ball, instead of giving it back to him, she turned her body completely around to give it to me, who was sitting behind out of her sight. I then gave it to Simon and she turned to Simon to receive it back. Whenever she gave it to me, I said ‘Thank you Anna’. Whenever Simon gave it to her, he said ‘It is Anna’s turn’. We played that simple game for a while. Anna also likes playing with her toy box, taking toy and and sometimes putting them back in again.

I soon realise being quiet means trouble. Whenever she is suddenly quiet for a while, she is doing something she is not allowed. One day I was writing my blog and she was playing on the floor. I managed to write for a while and was very surprised that she hadn’t complained yet. I turned and checked on her. I couldn’t believe it! She had already torn off a page from her book and had also eaten nearly a quarter of the page. The other time it was chewing wire. Another time it was mashing the laptop.

I think she now knows the concept of object permanence. In the evening or morning when I feed her lying down, I often check my phone behind a pillow. At first she didn’t pay attention at all. Now she turns and tries to lift up the pillow behind her to find the phone.

She has become much more chatty. She says a lot of ‘daa-daa’. She hasn’t said ‘maa-maa’ yet. It is fun to see her more responsive now. When I talk to her ‘daa-daa’ or ‘vaa-vaa’, she often talks back to me with the same sound.

She went through a period of being very fussy about food. She hardly ate anything except for beansprouts and fruit. She lost a bit of weight then. We think that her teeth were bothering her. Luckily after a few days, she started to eat much more. We are trying to fatten her up by giving one or two egg yolks each day. She has started to eat chicken, pork and other food. She still loves fruit, but hates banana and avocado. She started to gain weight again. She is now 7.31kg with her top and nappy on.

A routine has gradually been formed with her napping. She needs 2 naps a day of around 45 minutes: one around 11am or 12pm, and one around 3pm or 4pm. She occasionally naps a bit longer, recently up to 2 hours. Maybe it is a growth spurt.

Her hair is growing. Her bald patch is looking better. Some hair starts to stick up a bit where they have grown longer. We often say she has her Daddy’s hair. Her eczema has completely gone. There is still a bit of dry skin around her wrist, but really mild. She had some allergic reaction to yogurt when she was smaller. We tried it again. She didn’t have a lumpy face but couldn’t sleep very well at night, crying more and waking up more. The same reaction occurred with other dairy products like cheese. So we decided not to give her dairy.

There was a period when she had very hard and big poo. One time she cried so hard because the poo got stuck. It was so hard to see her suffer without being able to help her. It sounds a silly reason, but I realise it hurts when your child suffers, no matter what it is related to, even though it was just poo.

My little one is really growing TOO FAST! I wish I could just keep her this little for longer.