Rayna Rose Fleming: December 2016

How did we get here already? Today my beauty, you are 10 months old.

You continue to be your usual demanding & high maintenance self but you offer so many positive personality traits now too. You smile & laugh a lot. You chatter in a much more responsive way. You are becoming so cuddly & affectionate. You're a total mama's girl!! and I love it <3

In addition to "mama" and "dada", this week you have added a new favourite phrase to your vocabulary... "uh-oh". Usually after you have dropped (or thrown) something from your highchair.

And speaking of your highchair, you spend a lot more time in it now. We are soldiering on with our weaning journey but things have gotten a lot better since our last update. You give it your best shot with 3 meals a day now - mostly feeding yourself, but breakfast is usually toast with me spoon feeding you cereal as well. We're still not at a stage where we can replace milk completely at meal times yet so we do top up with a bit of formula, but this is a vast improvement on how things were. And we will get there... slowly but surely. Although getting you to stop blowing raspberries with a mouth full of food is still a sticking point.

Your favourite foods include:

Breadsticks
Houmous
Cheese
Pasta
Jacket potato
Cottage Pie

But you still don't care much for water and give me a look like I'm trying to poison you if any does manage to make it's way into your mouth :D

Your physical development seems to be progressing well too. Commando crawling, as always, is your preferred mode of getting about but you do spend a lot of time rocking back & forth on all fours now and you can actually manage a few shuffles forward too but often you then think 'sod that' and just belly-flop because it's quicker to stick with what you know.

Earlier this week you managed to pull yourself up to a standing position for the first time! (well done) which is handy because standing up is your favourite thing to do. You're always so much happier stood up - maybe the world looks better from higher up - but you are also getting better at navigating your feet and have actually risked a few attempts at cruising too. So far you can manage one step out and can bring your other foot across to meet in the middle, but then you struggle to shift the weight back to the other leg to make the next step.... I honestly don't think it will take much longer to click though.

You are really coming along at the moment. Parenting is a tough gig at the best of times and our journey has been particularly rough at times. And whilst I want to paint an honest picture about what things have really been like, I feel like sometimes your blogs posts come across a bit moan-y (I don't mean to). But as I look back at what has happened this month to write this post, I feel happy & content. I recall positive progress & happy times. This month has been a good month (see, they do happen!) but even through all the hard times, I wouldn't have swapped you for the world, baby girl xx