Today marks ten months of baby girlness in our home! I’m so glad she’s here! Quickie update in developments this month: she has seven teeth now! She cruises around furniture with impunity. She pinches your arms and then scream-squeals to demonstrate her empathy for your pain. She ate a gemstone, but it was recovered when we washed diapers. We successfully traveled to Chicago and back. She pinches and scratches while nursing and is a wild, twisting nurser. Naps have been bad lately, which can lead to commensurate maternal despair. She still sleeps on my arm all night long. She still smells like apricots. Has the bestest baby yogurt breath. She has the best eyes and eyelashes ever. While still even-tempered and brave when faced with new things, she has now thrown a big-time fit over dum-dum deprivation (also, has located and consumed entire blue dum-dum from the boys Halloween haul). Eats lots of things (some edible, some not) and likes broccoli the best. Is on a potty strike and stiffens back to make pottying impossible. Has been standing alone for brief moments. Has started going to visit like a big a girl with Baba and Tom (my parents) when the boys go over in the afternoon.

I still look at her with surprise and amazement multiple times a week—how did we get you? Are you really here? Oh my goodness, MY BABY! Feeling a weird sense of clock ticking as she approaches one year—is this really the last two months that I will ever spend with a baby of my own in my house? I’m trying to remember that…only two months of baby left…every single day so that I appreciate and marvel and cherish her every, single day. (Which, of course, all babies deserve, but which can be hard to remember—non-napping “schedule” also makes me “fail” in this arena some days as well.) I’m becoming more certain that she really is our last baby, though I still think maybe quite a lot. She needs a lot of me lately—lots of in arms, in baby carrier time. I’m sure in another *blink* she will be walking and won’t need me like that. I’m her favorite place right now still though. She says da da and mama and hi and bye. I’m only teaching one in-seat class this session and it is a lot easier on us all. I have signed on for three in January again though—it is three sections of the same class, so that is bound to be easier than the early fall session was, right?! I’m still plugging away on my own classes too—I’m taking six classes, but they are mercifully all self-paced (I’m over halfway done with several of them). I love them all—really amazing content. I love “stretching” my brain with them and thinking and pondering over and writing about complex ideas and issues.

We also had a family photo shoot this week: