Saturday was Alethea’s ten-month birthday.  Happy Birthday, Baby!

February was a big month for Alethea’s gross motor skills.  As I’ve already mentioned in another post, she began crawling up stairs in the middle of the month.  At first she would only do one or two steps, but now she can quickly do a whole flight.  She still tries to go down the stairs face first, so that is something that we are working on.  Hold on for a second while I go get our climber off the steps…

Okay, I’m back.

The biggest milestone Alethea reached this month was walking.  She still only takes a few steps here and there and only when someone is there to catch her, but she’s working on it.  I think the best part about this milestone is that she is very self-aware now and is excited to be doing something new.  She’s so proud of herself, you can just see it on her face whenever she manages several steps in a row.  (I don’t suppose the lavish praise from Mommy hurts her self esteem either.)

As far as other skills go, Alethea’s vocabulary that was rapidly expanding in the middle of the month seems to have stalled out lately due to all the walking practice.  She still says “all done” and “uh-oh” on a daily basis, but she is a lot less vocal than she was a couple weeks ago.

Alethea has begun putting objects in larger objects.  She does this when she puts her toy balls in her play gumball machine.  She also sometimes drops toys into the toy basket in the living room.  I’m hoping this means her next milestone will be picking up after herself.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

While being slightly early on the walking/talking fronts, Alethea continues to lag behind in the eating/sleeping arenas.  She hardly eats any solid food because she refuses to eat anything (except yogurt) off of a spoon and she is fairly picky about which finger foods she consumes.  I’m sort of at my wits end as far as feeding her goes and can’t figure out whatever happened to my “will eat anything, pickles included” baby.

Sleeping?  I’m too tired to go there, so let’s just say it hasn’t gotten any better this month.

On a more pleasant note, Alethea is starting to love reading and will actually sit still through two or even sometimes three of her board books.  I’m overjoyed about this because reading to my child was one aspect of parenthood that I was really looking forward to and up until recently it was a battle just to keep Alethea on my lap long enough to read the title page.

Well, I think I’ve hit on all the major things that came up in February.  To sum up month 10: eating and sleeping = bad.  Gross and fine motor skills = progressing nicely.  Vocabulary = 5-7 words.  Oh, and tooth count = 6.

Thanks for reading!