eleven months.

Hannah with Bear at 11 months...(the best shot I could get.)

Hannah,

Only one more month and you will be ONE!  I don't know where time has taken us.  I hope that I have made the best of your time as a baby.  I am seeing that little baby starting to do things that toddlers do and I have to admit that I am not ready for that yet!  However, there are lots of things that you are doing and of course, we need to remember them!

At 11 months you are:

• Eating mostly table food and finger feeding yourself.  No more baby food, you just spit it out and make your yuck face!
• You have learned to give us kisses, at first your kisses were only reserved for Mommy and of course, I relished that!  But now you give big kisses to Mommy, Daddy and even your little baby doll.  Sometimes you will stick out your tongue and give us big slobbery wet kisses!  WE LOVE IT!
• You are starting to "get" how to play with certain toys, you will put in and take out toys from a container, you will take the rings off of the stacking rings toy, you will bang blocks together, you will "try" to roll a ball back to me when I roll it to you, etc.
• You are starting to understand what things we say mean.  For instance, when I say "Do you want to go outside? or on a walk?"  you crawl to the door.  Or when I say "Are you hungry?"  you crawl into the kitchen.  Or "Are you all done?" (eating) You pump your hands up and down in the air. 
• You hate getting your diaper changed and as soon as the diaper comes off, you are turning to your belly and crawling across to the other side of the room with your cute little nakie bum behind you!   How can I not laugh!  That is, until it comes time to put your diaper back on, then it's like the world is coming to an end!
• You are starting to enjoy books more and more.  You will be holding a book and come over to me and tap on my knee or face.  I take it that you want me to read to you and you gladly sit on my lap and enjoy turning the pages and listening to me make all sorts of funny noises for the animals and such.  Sometimes you try to copy my dog and lamb sounds. :)
• No more words besides ma-ma and da-da yet, but you sure do like to say Da-da, Da-da, Da-da. ALL. THE. TIME! :)  You really only say Mama when you are sad, sleepy, or in your crib awake after sleeping or in the middle of the night.  The other day I asked if you wanted a banana and you said "na-na!"  But I have not heard it since.
• You have started standing by yourself a few seconds at a time.
• You have started to dance spontaneously when upbeat music comes on, I cannot tell you how much this makes me SMILE!  Eeeeee!
• You are a screamer!  It doesn't matter if you are mad or happy, you like to hear yourself make screaming noises!  Personally, I like the happy ones WAY better than the mad ones!
• You have been paying more attention to the TV.  Yes, I admit it, I never thought I would let my baby watch TV, but Elmo and Baby Einstein are life savers while I am preparing dinner!  You start to get excited when I turn on the TV and you see the little Baby Einstein caterpillar crawling onto the screen.  That's really the only time you watch TV though at this point.  You are to busy the rest of the time to even pay attention!  I guess that's good. :)

• This mornong you were in bed with Mommy and Daddy and you started clapping!  LOVE IT!
• You have a total of 7 teeth.
• The biggest thing this month is that you are finally SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!  HA-LE-LU-YAH!  My friend Suzi introduced me to a book called Good Night Sleep Tight and thanks to her and the Sleep-Lady Shuffle you can now put yourself to sleep and stay asleep from about 8 PM to 6:30/7 AM most nights.  You still wake sometimes, but that is to be expected and it's usually only for a few minutes and you go back to sleep, or I rock you for a minute or two and sing a song and then put you back in your crib and you go back to sleep.  Sigh.  It's wonderful!  I still rock you to sleep for naps but you are sleeping better through those anyway, plus I love to hold and cuddle my little sleeping baby...it won't last much longer that way! (Edited: I wrote this on 10/3/10, 2 days ago, and the past two nights Hannah has been waking 2 or 3 times a night...teething?  growing?  big milestone?  who knows.  But I think I jinxed myself for writing it!)
• You have turned into a little cuddle-bug and we love it.  Today during General Conference you cuddled with Dad for about 15 minutes or so.  You cuddle big time when it is time to nap or go to bed (however, you are still so wiggly when you do this, like you are trying to get comfortable or something!  You make me laugh!)  And this morning you were cuddling with me in our bed for awhile, it was great.

Oh baby, baby!  We love you more than we can express!

Love, Mama and Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada...

Happy girl.

Enjoying a walk in the brisk fall air.

Cuddles with Dad.

Enjoying some mandarin oranges (with some evidence of chocolate shake).

Hmm...saving some for later?

Caught in the act...one of Hannah's favorite places to play make a mess.

Our little yogi.

Playing with the stacking rings.

"Mary had a little lamb."

"All Done!"

Enjoying a popsicle-I love that happy look in her eyes!

Cuddlin' with Mama. (Don't judge the smeared eye makeup-i just woke up yo!)

Loving the whipped cream for conference crepes!

Cuddlin' with Dadums.

Cute bum, but I need to finish changing your diaper!!!

and just so you get a picture of how active this little girlie is...here is one of MANY of the "un"cooperative photos from our 11 month photo shoot...