what is ellis doing now? 10 months

Physical Progress

1. Probably her greatest progress is that she is now able to comfortably and frequently pull herself into standing position. She started off using her wooden toy (pictured) - it was all very wobbly and unstable at first. But she's gotten much better at it and she's now pretty stable. She'll use anything (stable or not) as leverage to get herself standing - CD shelves, the coffee table, dining chairs, her high chair.

2. Her crawling can reach feverish pace - especially if she's excited and has her eye set on something. She crawls SUPER fast, launching a rallying war cry before she heads toward her target. A favourite is the man hole in the kitchen - she'll go for it when I'm not looking.

3. Pushes doors open. Goes "exploring" - from just the living/dining room, she's taken to crawling into various rooms, toilets etc. She will also crawl around looking for people.

4. Likes whacking soft toys, rummaging through our waste bins (paper stuff only!), shoes, pulling off rubber corner protectors.




Emotions & Personality

1. She is a truly happy baby - she smiles, chuckles and laughs all the time.

2. Can't sit still - she is all over the place - over at the shelves pulling out DVD sets (and the DVDs out of the boxes), playing with Kisu's guitars, trying to get things on the coffee table, going for the bin, banging on the lift door. She also loves to stand and observe the lift display - the panel where you can see numbers change as the lift goes through different floors.

3. Not afraid of loud sounds - she'll go in search of the vacuum cleaner when she hears it.

4. Likes rough and tumble stuff - loves anything with movement.

5. Enjoys playing "Toss" - she will throw her bolster, soft toys and pacifier out of her crib. And she'll stand by the side, hands on the rail of the crib peeking over at the item waiting for you to toss it back in. Gets super tickled as her bolster sails over her head back into the crib. She'll go scrambling after it, pull herself up the side of the crib and toss it again. And repeat. She LOVES it.

6. Will respond to "sayang-sayang" where she'll stroke my arm, "good" (instead of giving the thumbs up, she holds up both palms). Also has learned to stick out her tongue. If you stick out your tongue at her, she will follow suit - plus waggle it around with her trademark cheeky look.

7. Says "Mama" and "Dada", and she will repeat it if you say it to her. Other favourite "words": "Ah-thhh", "Ah-Da", "Bvvv", "Vu-vuh"



Eating

No major changes, except that I feed her larger portions now! She can eat the same amount of protein as I do in one meal. E.g. 1 chicken drumstick or 1 piece of fish fillet.

Sleeping

No changes in her nap schedule either. But now her pre-nap routine has changed. Sometimes, she will sit quietly and let me cuddle her a bit before I pop her into the crib. Other times, I have to humour her by playing "Toss" first, or by carrying her and dancing around. Now, she is never close to sleep when I leave the room. In fact, almost always, she is standing up by the crib. I just tell her to "nap" and say goodbye before I leave the room. Then she settles on her own.

Progress at 9 months