Life on the Road Less Traveled: The 10 Month Update

These updates sure do creep up on me so quickly! I wouldn't mind if time would slow down a bit. This past weekend, on December 7th, our little girl turned 10 months. The age is symbolic in our world because it means she is ready to be moved up into the older infant classroom at her school. Since the school is closed two weeks at the holidays, we decided to wait until after the new year to switch her over full time. During this month, she'll spend a few hours a few days a week with the older kids to help with the transition. I don't expect it will be a challenge since Rose seems to prefer the older kids, and two of her friends just moved into the older class last month.

Rose is happy to be 10 months!

Sporting a 12 month outfit

Here's a summary of Rose at 10 Months:

The big news this month is that Rose got her ears pierced. In the Portuguese culture, it's common for little girls to have their ears pierced within a few months. I was torn because I wanted her ears pierced, but couldn't stomach the thought of actually having it done. Our Brazilian neighbor recommended her dermatologist who pierced her daughter's ears and we were told they would only do it until a child's 1st birthday or we'd have to wait until she was older (like 6-7 years). We decided to have it done the week before Thanksgiving. Rose screamed when the "gun" punctured the ear, but was fine within 30 seconds of it being done. She really is a tough girl. Maybe people will stop mistaking Rose for a boy now that she has earrings. That hair just isn't growing fast enough!

Our mobile "cruiser" is close to walking. She walks all over the place with some assistance. Sometimes she'll walk with the help of our hands, but more often she will alternate between crawling and standing holding a stationary item. With us, she loves alternating between walking slow and very fast. When she's playing with things on the table, she often uses both hands, leaving her standing unassisted for a short period of time. One of these days she is going to forget to hold onto something and just start walking. As you can see from the videos, she's a very busy girl at 10 months!

Rose still loves saying goodbye to everyone with her full arm wave, or her Ciao, Bella wave.

She and daddy are saying Ciao Bella to mommy

After her slight head cold while traveling for Thanksgiving, Rose caught another bug at school. This time, the bug infected the whole house! We were all pretty miserable last week with a stomach bug that started with Rose, passed to me, and even managed to get Colin. Thankfully we weren't sick at the same time. Rose fought the bug quickly with a couple episodes of vomiting in the early morning hours on Tuesday. I didn't get sick until Thursday afternoon/evening, and Colin got sick on Friday afternoon/evening. Colin usually has a stomach of steel, so for him to get sick, it must have been a bad one. Rose got over the bug like a champ and really didn't act sick. Her symptoms were a few episodes of vomiting and diarrhea. I on the other hand, seriously debated going to urgent care after being sick for 4 hours! Colin said he's probably only had one stomach bug in his life that was worse than this one. I should be grateful that Rose doesn't complain much and that she recovers from illness quickly, but I am ready for her to stop catching stuff at school!

Rose still loves to ~~say~~ yell "ma-ma-ma", "ba-ba-ba" and the occasional "da-da." She also learned how to make fun sounds with the teachers at school.

Rose still eats what we eat and loves her grapes and meat. Over Thanksgiving break we ate a fair amount of turkey and had meatballs a few times. Rose had no complaints with those menu items. She's also good at eating her vegetables. Rose hasn't tried desserts or nuts yet. We also haven't done fish in awhile. I'm excited to report that we've made it another month without formula. I think we are now in the clear since Rose eats so well. I did notice a drop in supply when I had the stomach bug, but Rose seems like she gets enough even when she gets less.

Rose seems to be having longer stretches of sleep at night, and since we got back from Thanksgiving, she's done a great job soothing herself to sleep. We've gotten into a better routine of bed by 7:30p, and she's been waking up on her own (fairly happy) around 7am. For the most part, she still wakes up once a night to nurse (around 12-1a), but we sometimes experience a full night's sleep. I continue to hope that sleeping through the night becomes a regular occurrence in our house again. While Rose still takes a power nap of 30 minutes once or twice a day, she's had more frequent episodes of sleeping 1-2 hours during her nap at home and at school.

We continue to use cloth diapers at all times except overnight, and it seems like Rose is leaking less. Last month I was worried about stretched elastics, but I think the problem was lack of absorbency. There is a whole science to cloth diapering that I can get into (maybe another post), but you have to "strip" your diapers once in awhile. The stripping removes buildup from chemicals released in urine (ammonia) and from buildup that might occur in detergent. With traveling and using washing machines at our family's houses, I wasn't able to wash the diapers in my usual way. Poor Rose ended up with ammonia burn (a bad diaper rash) from the drive home that cleared as soon as I stripped the diapers, let her bottom air out, and used some shea butter diaper cream. I just stripped the diapers by washing the diapers through a few extra cycles (one of which had bleach). Next time we head north, I might try to bring some detergent that is to be used with hard water to see if that cleans the diapers better.

Now on to some of this month's pictures...