Abigial is 11 Months Old!

Our baby girl is growing up so fast! Oh my goodness... just the thought of her being almost a year old is amazing! I was out looking for birthday and Christmas gift ideas today with a good friend whose daughter is the same age and we agreed that its crazy that they are old enough now for big kid toys!

Abigail is growing and changing so much! Although still petite (someone at Costco today asked me if she was 6 months old... really??? haha... She's not THAT small!) weighing in at about 18 1/2 pounds, she is very active, very attentive to people, animals, and things, and loves to watch and interact with people. She is rather shy though and it blessed this Momma's heart today when someone started talking to her and she quickly walked over and grabbed my leg, hugging it tightly, and borrowing her face in it, while still watching the lady. It was so cute and a first that she could actually walk to me to hide by me. :-) I want her to be friendly to others, but I love that she is quiet and not willing to go to just anyone!

Her personality is full of spunkiness, stubbornness, independence (although at the same time very attached to Mom and Dad), joy, smiles, enthusiasm, and inquisitiveness. She loves to explore new things and her little blue eyes just sparkle when she's happy and excited!

She does love to snuggle with Momma and Daddy when she's tired or being shy... so sweet!

Abigail adds so much life and fun to our little family. She is always busy doing something... Getting into something... like the trash can, eating and shredding toilet paper, emptying her toy basket, etc... haha!

The last two weeks Abigail has really taken off with her walking! She, of course, does best without shoes, but we're encouraging her to walk more and more while we're out and about to help strengthen her feet and legs. She did really well today walking around Southern's Campus in her new boots.

She has learned to wave "bye-bye" now and we're still working on her sign language of "please" and "all done." She seemed to have mastered them pretty well and then she learned how to dance and now she tends to just dance for what she wants. haha... Or just wave an arm (which we accept for "please"). She loves when we turn music on the TV and will stand or sit there and dance along.

I LOVE THIS STAGE!!! Abigail is at such a super fun and interactive age. I'm just loving it so much. It is harder, granted, because of learning how to discipline her now and tame her stubbornness, but it's still so much fun to watch her comprehend things and learn.

Abigail is a very  big eater! We have been blessed with a fairly non-picky eater... although for some reason she has stopped liking green veggies. :-( For breakfast she can easily eat a whole banana, handful of grapes, and two egg yolks. For lunch she can put away half an avocado and an entire sweet potato. For dinner... let's just say we've started looking for restaurants that have "kids eat free" nights. ;-) She can eat almost an entire Chickfila kids meal now! That includes a grilled chicken breast and a small fry. She has only had a kids meal there once, but man did she love it! She does not eat "baby food" any more but eats pretty much what we eat. Still with the exception of grains. I tried a few gluten free grains with her (gf oats, rice, and corn) and they tore her little system up giving her really bad diapers and horrible smelly breath! So her little system is just not able to process them yet. I'm fine with it though because I believe she is healthier without them at this age. I plan to try her on raw goats milk and eventually raw cows milk after she turns a year old. I'm really hopeful that she will be able to handle dairy! She is a huge meat lover! I'm so glad too because we work hard to only buy healthy, free range, non-hormone laden, grass fed, nitrate free meats. So I know she is getting healthy proteins and fats through them. Yay!

Here are some other random cute pictures of her to leave you with... Obviously, I could hardly keep her still in the chair with her sign and puppy... so here are other shots for you. :-)

 She loves to play with Baby Roland's bouncy seat. :-) Always makes her smile! Notice how big she looks next to it!

 Her favorite thing is to pull the bananas to listen to the music...

 

Still only two teeth! :-)

Silly girly!

Oh... and the big question still remains... "What color is her hair?" Well, the best we can tell it's going to be a dirty/strawberry-blonde. In some lights it looks really blonde, in some lights it's a light red, when it's wet it's really brown looking... so who knows! We're sticking with dirty/strawberry-blonde for now. It's absolutely beautiful... whatever color it is! :-D