10 months

Wow, I cannot believe it's already been 10 months. Ellie has officially been outside of me now longer than she was inside!
She's going through a developmental explosion right now, but I'll try to summarize in this month's top 10.

1. Crawling! There is no stopping Ellie these days... well, except with a gate or other large obstruction. As one of her teacher's pointed out the other day, we spent so long trying to get her moving and now we're trying to slow her down — or at least keep her from getting into the trash, the dog toys, the power cords, etc...
2. Working on pulling up to standing. She's actually done this a couple times, but it's not consistent. Ellie is getting really close to being able to do it all the time. And then we'll really be in trouble :)
3. Needing to learn "nice touch." It turns out Ellie is a bit of a meanie to the other babies at day care right now. She likes to poke them in the eyes, ears, nose and even pull hair. She doesn't mean to hurt them, I know, but she needs to learn that those touches can hurt. Ellie is even scratching and pulling hair on me and Brian these days... so we need to keep working on this lesson with her. Hopefully we'll have a breakthrough soon.
4. Emptying toys out of bins, buckets and trays. It seems that her favorite activity right now is taking all of her toys out of whatever container is closest. And item on her daily log from school the other day read: "Emptied two whole toy bins. Big mess! :)" Maybe her next phase will be an obsession with putting things away?
5. Saying lots of new sounds/words. In addition to her staples, ma-ma and da-da, Ellie has picked up the "na" and "uh" syllables. And I'm not sure if it qualifies as her first word or not, but she's been saying "UH-ohh" often when she drops things from her highchair or changing table. Funny.
6. Throwing things. Ellie loves to throw food from her highchair to the dogs on the floor. She also is quick to throw whatever toy she's holding to the ground in favor of a new toy she gets in her sight. It's funny now, but I'm sure it's a habit we'll have to break her of in time.
7. Eating "big girl" food. Nearly all of her food restrictions are gone now, except for no eggs, fish, nuts and limited dairy. That means she's exploring a lot of new finger foods. And she's also starting on the toddler menu at school... we'll see how she likes it!
8. Weaning. Ellie decided she's almost done with nursing. She was nursing 3x each day at nine months, but then dropped to two and is now only willing to sit still long enough for one feeding each day. I'm a little sad about it. But I'm happy with how well we did for so long. And I still get to start my morning by feeding my little angel... we'll see how much longer that lasts.
9. Loving games. Ellie is a huge fan of the "SO big" game. And she loves playing peek-a-boo and when I sing Pat-a-cake with her. I'm looking forward to doing more of this and having her sing along, too.
10. I know I've used this one before, but seriously she's amazing us every day. When she is happy and smiling, I feel like nothing in the world can really be that bad. And watching her learn so much, even if it's in tiny pieces at a time, makes both of us proud beyond words.