11 on 11/11

Gem is now 11 months. She is getting better every day at walking. She is even starting to run, especially when she sees her daddy get home from work. She is starting to go through the clingy phase. She’ll cry (yell) when you leave the room, bedtime or not. She loves to carry a stuffed animal (Piglet is her favorite) and a blanket. On car trips she snuggles up to them both. Sometimes you can barely see her peeking out from under all her dolls. She is growing like a weed. I don’t have any stats this month, but she is in 24m/2T clothes. They are a little long but snug around her bum. I just bought her some 24m long sleeve shirts and pajamas and they are all sooo tight around her chunky arms. Everyone tells me once she’s walking she’ll thin out. Well, she’s been walking for over a month now and I don’t see it. She’s getting a little bit pickier when it comes to food. Baby food just isn’t cutting it. But she only has 3 teeth so it is hard to give her chunky food. It has to be really soft. We are having a little trouble getting her to transition from a bottle to a cup. She likes to use a cup for water but every time I sneak formula in there she flips out. My friend suggested that I wait until she is drinking whole milk and only put that in the cup so she won’t think otherwise. We’ll give it a go. She’s added a few words to her vocabulary. Dada is still her favorite. But she will do “uh-oh” and “dog”. And occasionally “MaMa”. She’s starting to shake her head No now but doesn’t always use it in context. Mostly when dancing.

All in all, she is such a wonderful little girl.

So wonderful in fact, that as of 11/30 I will be staying home full time with her.

Shortly after I returned from maternity leave, I got a fortune cookie that read “This year your highest priority will be your family.” I taped it to my cubicle/pod at work and every day I looked at it as a reminder. For the last eight months Lincoln and I have worked diligently on getting things situated to make this goal a reality. There were a few moments that it just seemed absolutely impossible. Then I got another fortune cookie. This one read “Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.” Being the bean counter that I currently am, I went over our finances again and again and everything seemed to fall into place. I gave my notice 3 weeks ago to give them time to train my “replacement”.

Now I am getting ready to be prepared for the next big adventure.