Marta And Her Personality

I love watching our little one develop. She used to be just a bundle of happiness and joy, but lately, at 10 months old, she's really starting to show a personality. Today when Trevor was feeding her dinner, Berit was pulling on the front of Marta's high chair. Marta didn't waste any time in telling her "Nah Nah Nah!" (No, no, no!), while pushing her hands off the chair. And when I nurse her these days, she bobs off and looks at me all goofily, and says "Baby bye bye" and waves toward the big frame we have above our bed with several black and white pics of the girls as babies in it. (We say goodnight to them each time she goes to bed.) When she does this, she smiles in a very comfortable way and I always expect her to give me a little wink, like it's our special time. (She also points to her source of nourishment and says "Ball, ball!") 

When she gets around the many babies her age in our social group, she tries to stick her finger in their mouths, then puts her finger into her own mouth, repeatedly, as if to say, "Look, we're the same! We have mouths!" She has absolutely no interest in her nose, and if I point to it she brushes my hand aside like, "Whatever, Mom. Check out my mouth."

Tonight while we were rocking, she started waving, and when I waved back, she clapped, like "Good job, you figured me out!" 

Like the other women in this family, she's really into shoes, and whenever she sees them she tries to dive into them from our arms. She just sits there and picks each one up, inspects it, plays with any laces or velcro closures, then moves onto the next one.

Her love affair with dogs continues, and just seeing a live dog in person isn't enough. She must make repeated contact with the dog, and knows that dogs lick and lives for it. Gross. But cute, kind of. (In stark contrast to big sis, who's afraid of all dogs.)

She is not yet crawling. I know. It's late. But she's nearly there; she just hates falling onto her belly and howls the moment her tum touches the ground. She's started standing for a few seconds at a time, and is doing the walking movements. I think she'll be just like B in the movement phase of her little life -- Berit crawled and walked in the same month, 11 months. 

And like her sister and cousins, she's oddly drawn to her Grandpa Doublestein -- "Pa-Pa," she says, and she babbles about him when he's not even here. Not that he's so strange to love, it's just not as if she sees him constantly.

She bleats out "MAAA" at all animals until she figures out what they really say. Of course, you might remember my previous post about books and dogs. This continues. She's terrified of the vacuum. She LOVES laying on the floor with the telephone pushing buttons. This isn't consistent for other button things, like the remote or toys. Just the phone, so sorry if she's called any of you and you heard of bunch of gooey, slobbery noises.

She still wakes up a couple times a night, she eats whatever we eat but doesn't eat lots (enough to stay asleep, anyway) and she loves whole milk. My plan was to try to have her weaned by 12 months, but I'm surprised that it's already 10 months -- and I have no plan to carry out this plan. So we'll see. But she certainly is a fun little baby to cuddle.