I know I say it every month, but I can’t believe Charlotte is already this old! I need to start thinking about her first birthday party because it will be here before we know it!

Just when I think she can’t get any cuter, she does! See?

At 10 months, Charlotte:

1.  Is all over the place! She is fast on all fours and wants to explore every corner of the house and put every little bitty speck of anything right in her mouth. It’s inevitable at this point that she’ll eat some dog food.

2.  Has started giving what I call “hugs,” where she lays her head against my neck and just snuggles. It melts my heart every time, and it’s especially sweet and precious given the fact that she doesn’t stay still much these days.

3.  Has 6 teeth now: 2 on top and 4 on the bottom. There could be more for all we know, but those are the ones that are definitely visible. She hates for us to poke around in her mouth.

4.  Loves clapping and waving. She doesn’t always grasp the appropriate context for these actions, so sometimes she’ll be upset and start waving or clapping, which cracks us up.

5.  “Dances” by bouncing up and down and sometimes swaying back and forth when she hears certain songs. It is the cutest thing ever.

6.  Loves putting objects like blocks and balls into containers. She’s been doing this for a while with a ball and her little tea cups, but now she’s started doing it with everything. She thinks it’s super fun.

7.  Eats whatever we give her. She has yet to refuse a food. She made some funny faces when I fed her fresh mango, but she still gobbled it up. She has mastered the pincer grasp and manages to get most things into her mouth on the first try, making a huge mess in the process, naturally.

8.  Enjoys playing with anything that is not actually her toy, like remotes, paper, magnets, dryer sheets, etc.   Her favorites are Bailey’s (our dog) toys that are covered in dog slobber. Delightful. She couldn’t care less about most of her soft toys, but she heads straight for Bailey’s whenever she sees them.

9.  Still goes to bed around 6:30 every night and wakes up between 6 and 6:30 most mornings. Although most of last week it was more like 5:00 or 5:30, but she has a nasty upper respiratory infection that I think is to blame.

10.  Learned how to play peekaboo. For months we’ve been putting a burp cloth or bib over her head then saying, “Where’s Charlotte?” and then pulling it off and saying, “There she is!” Just the other day we were doing this, and she started holding the burp cloth over her face while we said, “Where’s Charlotte?” Now she’ll do it and giggle and grin when she pulls it down. Clearly

11.  Babbles up a storm. I am so relieved about this because until now Charlotte really didn’t babble much at all beyond “ah ah ah.” Then about halfway through December, her “talking” just exploded, and now she says “dada” (without knowing what it actually means) and “baba” and “ga.”

12.  Feeds herself her own bottle. She literally just learned this skill this weekend, and she still needs help tilting the bottle or cup back far enough if it’s almost empty. I’ve been trying to get her to drink her formula from a sippy cup for a while now, but she would just spit the cup out of her mouth. Then, thanks to a tip from a Twitter friend, I bought a sippy cup that has a tip very similar to a nipple, and it’s worked great! She didn’t take it at first, but she’s used it several times now, so I think we’ve mastered that.

Charlotte has clearly been very busy the past month, which explains why I’ve hardly taken any pictures of her outside of the holidays. It’s very hard to catch a moving target, you know. 🙂 I’ve completely given up on using the blocks in her monthly picture since she wants to lunge at them the minute we sit her down. I did manage to get this one shot that I think is adorable, and I’m glad we’re at least keeping Pooh Bear in the pictures:

Happy 10 months (a few days late), baby girl! We couldn’t love you more if we tried.