Catching up to Elaine

Elaine is an active 10 month old. Not only does she continue to crawl quickly around the house as if she owns it, Elaine is learning new skills. She is pulling up on all sorts of things. Recently, she spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get her whole body up a step. She made excellent progress, bringing most of her body up, but eventually gave up. Elaine was trying to get to Meredith, who wisely surmised the way to get some space from her clingy little sister was to go half way up the stairs.

This morning, I entered Elaine's bedroom to see her standing up in her crib for the first time. I don't know how long she had been standing there. She's still learning on how to get down from a stand. This was the first time she pulled up all the way by herself. In the past weeks she often has grabbed our hands to pull up into a standing position. It's a whole new chapter here. I'm going to have to get the baby gate on the stairs pretty soon!

Elaine's two bottom teeth are sticking well into her mouth and the top ones are imminent. Yet, she still doesn't want to try to chew anything or feed herself. We give her cut up cheerios. But despite our demonstrations, she prefers to push them around and hold them instead of placing them in her mouth. Her favorite food continues to be yogurt.

On the verbal front, Elaine is starting to say "mama" more often than chance in reference to her mom. I swear that I thought I heard her say something like "bah!" to a ball a couple times last weekend, but it's hard to say for sure.