Natalie Claire: 10 Months

Name: Natalie Claire

Weight: 20 pounds

Height: 28 inches

Health: Super Healthy, no health problems or concerns.

Sleep: Waking up once a night, anywhere between 4 and 6. For awhile there she was getting up at 6 and not going back to sleep, but for the most part, she will sleep 10-12 hours with one wake-up for a quick feeding. The good thing is, I can get up, change her diaper, feed her and get her back to sleep within 15 minutes now! Teething has not been too much of a problem with sleeping. She did wake up randomly two nights this week at 10pm and 3am, but I haven't had any problem with nursing her back to sleep. I've been very happy and proud that I haven't had to give her any medicine during this teething process. My basic motto when it comes to pain meds right now for her is "no meds during the day, and tylenol at night only if nursing isn't working." I've given her tylenol 3 times since she's been born, and honestly - I regret giving it to her each time, because I don't think she really needed it at all. I think I just couldn't figure out why she was crying so I tried that - and knocking her out with meds because I don't know what's wrong, is not really acceptable to me.

Social: Gymboree is sooooo different now. Natalie jumps to be the first to do any of the activities at Gymboree. I have to physically restrain her to let the other kids go first sometimes. She's super eager, into everything, and all over the place. She likes to try and touch the faces of the other babies there. She's starting to get shy with strangers - she'll smile and then bury her head in my shoulder when she meets someone new.

Diet: Still Exclusively Breast Fed with some meals thrown in there each day. Even with the meals, she's still nursing every 2-3 hours, but nursing sessions are seriously about 5-8 minutes total now, so it's nothing to quick sit down and feed her. She's eating more and more foods and I've been moving more and more to whole pieces of food rather than the purees. I kind of switch back and forth between the two. For someone with no teeth until a few days ago, she handled these foods pretty well! As for the teething situation - I'm not experiencing any pain yet with nursing, but I do feel like she is dangerously walking that line between it not hurting and hurting - I'm definitely a little more braced for potential pain when I nurse now. I so hope I don't have any issues with breastfeeding and teething. I have two more months until my goal of one year...if I can just get to there then I'll asses how much longer I plan to nurse.

Likes: Getting into trouble, being chased, walks, being outside, eating, taking all the books off of her bookshelf, taking a bath.

Dislikes: Anyone trying to look in her mouth, shots (who doesn't?), headbands don't really stay on her anymore also, greek yogurt (we're working on this one!)

Milestones: 
There are a ridiculous amount of milestones since my last update in June. In the last 2-3 months Natalie has started:
*Crawling
*Standing
*Cruising around the furniture
* She says "mamamamamamama" quite often...still working on "dada"
*She eats just about anything now: most fruits and veggies, quinoa, chicken, graham crackers, cheerios. She feeds herself and mostly prefers that to being spoon fed. 

*Two teeth popped through in the past two weeks (and the next two are close behind)

* She just started purposely waving this week
* She prefers not to be caged, so we just have certain barriers placed around our living room. She will find the weakest link in any barrier and will always, always, break free of where she is supposed to be - you can almost literally see the wheels turning in her head she tries to figure it out. Case in point: