Baker Bea | 11 Months

Eleven.
I literally can not handle the fact that my baby is almost a year old. As her birthday approaches, I think about it daily. I really don’t know where the past year went or why it went by so quickly.

This season of life that Baker is in is just so much fun, y’all. Her personality is continuing to develop into this silly little girl who loves to make others laugh.

She loves to insert herself and be involved in anything we are doing, then when she accomplishes even the smallest feat, you can plainly see all over her face how proud she is of herself!

With the warm hot weather, we’ve really been able to spend a lot of quality time together outside in her little pool, “yard-saling” on Saturday mornings, or napping together in the afternoons. It’s little moments like this when we see the pure joy in her face that I cherish the most.

And that’s what she is to us. Pure joy. How did I ever wait so long (almost 6 years) and not know the love and happiness I was missing out of from the gift of a child? Don’t get me wrong, I’m so thankful for the years that Cory and I had with  just the two of us to grow and mature together as one family but looking back, I just don’t know how I ever existed without our sweet girl.

She so completely overflows our hearts, you guys. She is truly our biggest blessing…we are so undeserving of her love!

OUR ELEVEN MONTH GAL STATS

Weight: 21 lbs 6 oz
Birth: 8 lbs 6 oz

Baker is in size 3 diapers and 12-month clothes. We’ve seemed to hit a lull in growth, and for that I’m thankful. We pretty much skipped over 9-month clothes and went straight to 12-month in hopes of getting more wear out of them and so far, it’s worked. She has a few 9-month pj’s that she can still fit but that’s about it. A few pairs of her pajamas are 18-month and fit her with a little room to grow. Why do babies grow so fast???

I know one day, Baker might not enjoy these rolls as much as I do, so I will take as many pictures as I can right now! And kiss them any chance I get!

LOVES The song “Work From Home” by 5th Harmony. Is this song appropriate for anyone, especially a child to listen to? Absolutely not. Does it work to calm her down when she’s screaming her head off? 100% of the time. So guess who hears this song about 10 times a week?

She also loves the song “Peanut Butter Jammy (jelly) Time” that we changed the words on (we really like to do that with songs!) and sing to her every night while we are putting her pj’s on. She really likes to dance to this song and gets so excited when we start singing it.

Baker’s also really into books right now. They keep her occupied and we are very thrilled about that! And while Mamady (Cory’s mom) was here for her last visit, she picked up a walker, which Baker just took right to cruising around the house in. She enjoys that she can be a part of whatever we are doing if we aren’t in the living room.

Just like in months past, Baker is still obsessed with her Aunt Gaga. All she has to do is just walk in the room and Baker gets excited and laughs at anything silly that she does.

HATES One of the biggest things that Baker dislikes is being told “no” or even hearing the word spoken at all. It absolutely hurts her feelings and breaks her heart if she even thinks you might have said “no” to her or might be fussing at her. My mom was at the house one day and Einstein got in Baker’s face so my mom said “Tell Einstein no, no, no” in a very playful voice. Baker cried for a good five minutes thinking Mimi was telling her no! Poor tenderhearted child! We will eventually have to break this because we have to tell her “no” sometimes but right now, she wins every time because it kills us to have her so upset. #firsttimeparents

Baker also hates to have her hair washed, towel dried or brushed. We had to buy a detangler and  a wet brush to get the tangles out of her curly head without hurting her.

EAT After just a few short months of eating mostly what we eat, Baker is pretty much over baby food. She doesn’t like that she can’t feed it to herself, even though we do let her practice with a spoon. She’d much rather have something that she can pick up and feed herself rather than have us spoon feed her baby food or regular food.

Right now, her eat schedule looks something like this:

7:00ish: 5oz bottle
10:30-11:00: 5oz bottle
12:30: Lunch (leftovers or grilled chicken, a fruit/veggies, yogurt)
2:30-3:00: 5oz bottle for nap time
5:30ish: Snack (puffs, yogurt bites)
7:00: Dinner (whatever we are eating)
8:30ish: 5oz- 8oz bottle depending on whether she ate all of her 2:30 bottle

In the next few weeks, I plan to introduce her to breakfast also–if she does well with that, we may cut out her second morning bottle. I’m in no rush to get her off the bottle (maybe I should be?) and I have plenty of frozen milk to get her through the next couple months.

Since I have plenty of milk to last her until past one year old,  I decided to start weaning and officially quit pumping on June 8th. Exactly 11 months exclusively pumping was a huge feat for me. I never imagined I would be able to provide for Baker for so long but very fortunate that she was/ is able to have breastmilk for at least her first year of life! I seriously thought about throwing my pump out the window on my way home but I’m holding on to it, just in case. I was not the least bit sad to pack that thing up. Not carrying 13 bags with me to work every morning is game changing, y’all. Game changing!

Baker has also gotten really good at using a sippy cup and in the next few weeks, I plan to offer her breastmilk in a sippy to see how she takes it. All she has ever had to drink so far is water (and just a few sips of lemonade) but has gotten good at using a straw.

SLEEP There’s not much to report on this end for month 11. Sleep definitely improved from month 10 but there were many nights that she ended up in our bed around 3:30-4:00am. It’s just easier that way! She still fights sleep really, really hard. She will do just about anything to keep herself awake including making the sweetest noise right before she falls asleep…like ammnhaaammnhaaammnhaaa…

Baker doesn’t roll much in her sleep, but she does spin, often ending up perpendicular between Cory and me. While just laying in her crib one morning, she was talking to herself and sat up from laying completely flat, so we had to drop her mattress for the first time. I really can’t believe that we made it so long without having to do it, but Baker isn’t very daring and still mostly just lays there once she wakes up. The way that her crib is designed, I was never able to put her bumper on with the mattress raised. Now that it’s lower, I put it on because Baker rolls into the headboard often and would kick it to keep herself awake. We are hoping that helps protect her little noggin! (And deadens the noise of the kicking!)

Baker sleeps better in our bed with a pillow so now that she’s old enough to move her head out of harm’s way, we tried putting a little flat one in her bed to see if that would help her sleep all night. It has helped some so we left it but it didn’t make a huge difference.

She still has to have her bunny to sleep (and I still haven’t found a backup!) Really though, Baker has to have her bunny in her hand or near her at all times. If we leave the room without it, she will look for it. One day, Cory jokingly rubbed it against his face and started saying “my bunny” and Baker burst into tears. She adores this bunny!

Naps are pretty hit and miss for Baker. There are some days where she will consistently take two naps a day…an hour long nap in the morning and a two 2 1/2-hour naps in the afternoon. Then there are other days where she won’t nap at all. We are still trying to figure out the best way to get them consistent, though.

PLAY/DEVELOPMENT Baker is so, so close to crawling. We just know that any day now, she’s going to take off and there will be no slowing her down! She has pulled herself to completely standing a few times and pulls up on to her knees almost daily. I have a feeling that when she does start to crawl, she won’t be crawling long before she starts walking.

One of Baker’s big “things” right now is to mimic things that we do. We click our tongue, she clicks her tongue. We say “thank you”, she says “thank you”. She’s also mastered waving hello and bye and knows to wave when someone is coming or leaving.

She also loves to play patty cake and clap for herself when she has accomplished something or feels proud of herself.

I’ve said this before but Baker is the smartest kid, y’all. She has figured out how to slide her finger underneath her pacifier clip and unclip it from her shirt so we’ve had to start clipping it out of her reach along the neck or to the back of her shirt. If we don’t, the dogs will take her pacifiers and chew them up. She also babbles nonstop. We’ve tried desperately to get in on camera but she has almost a roll in the back of her throat when she babbles and it’s hilarious. I would kill to know whatever it is she thinks she is saying. Literally, if she’s awake, she is babbling. Lord help us for when she can talk!

A FEW FIRSTS DURING MONTH 11

We celebrated my first Mother’s Day and Baker was dedicated at church.

Baker sat in a booster seat for the first time when Wild Wings didn’t have a table that a high chair would fit at. She looked like a little toddler sitting there instead of my baby. Surprisingly, she did great in it!

Baker successfully went to the bathroom in the potty. But no, she’s not potty trained. We just have a daddy with a good eye as he was putting her in the bath tub. Look how proud she looks!

Mamady bought us Baker a pool and it has been so much fun introducing her to the water! We had our first “pool day” and Gracie and my nephew Carson dropped by! The water was really cold but Baker enjoyed it, for the most part. We are hoping she will be comfortable with by the time we go to the beach!

We all love when Uncle Caleb gets to visit! Even though this wasn’t his first visit, it’s the first since she was a little bitty baby so it’s a big deal!

Well, Baker destroyed her first piece of furniture. She was sitting in the floor playing and Cory and I (who were on the couch) were amazed at how quietly Baker was playing, just on the other side of the coffee table. Like not a peep…we thought she playing with Einstein. When I finally got up to check on her, I realized that our little termite had been digging her fingers into our coffee table. There was saw dust everywhere! How can someone so little cause so much damage? Lesson learned for these rookie parents.

We watched Aunt Gaga graduate from 5th grade! She will be moving on to middle school next year…where does the time go???

We went on our first wagon ride around the neighborhood. Since she is terrified of her swing, we really thought she wouldn’t enjoy her wagon but we were wrong! She waved at every house that we passed and clapped as we were going along.

She would even scoot her butt when we’d stop, trying to get the wagon moving again. It was just precious how much she enjoyed it!

We had Baker’s first passport photo taken. Baby passport photos will never not be funny to me.

To Baker:

This month you’ve really come alive with your personality and your willingness to be part of new things. Your beautiful smile and infectious laugh make it a joy to do things with you, from grocery shopping to wading in the kiddie pool to going to garage sales. You can brighten any day and lift any mood. We love you and can’t believe we’ve already gotten so close to a year with you!