Baby C - 10 months

10 months, baby C, where has that gone? I had been meaning to write you a 9 month post and then I realised that today you are 10 months old.

You can crawl all over the whole house. Nothing is safe from your fat hands or your sweet mouth. You will eat anything - a foam penguin's foot, a dried up leaf, cotton thread. We need to do some serious baby proofing, because you can open drawers and jam your fingers in them, chew on the bin bag, tangle yourself in an iPhone cord, pull up on the tv cabinet. Your big sister is extremely excited that you can stand and desperately wants you to be able to walk - she insists that by hefting you about she is "helping" you to learn faster. Just like your big sister you have discovered that the bath is a great height for pull-up practice and bath times have become even more heart stopping than previously.

Although you're happy to eat whatever you find on the floor you're also doing pretty well with the real food. Yoghurt and avocado are good enough that you're willing to eat them from a spoon, everything else you want to cram in yourself. Homemade hot chips, fruit, cheese on toast, pasta, bits of chicken - you want it all. The four new teeth that have appeared rather suddenly over the past two months have helped - now there's four at the top and two at the bottom. You're still having milk four times a day and we somehow need to get that down to just morning and night over the next few months in time for me to go back to work two days a week at the end of April.

Full time school for E has meant we've forced you onto two sleeps a day. Fortunately going to school each morning is a good distraction for being tired, because you would rather go to sleep at about 8.30 but that is just when we need to arrive at school and so you have to wait until 9.00 when we get home. Exhausted by your admiration of the four and five year olds you've been coming home and doing some great morning sleeps. You're still perfect at night time - either feed to sleep or almost, you're then out for 11-12 hours.

E is also desperate for you to talk. You can babble what sound like real words (da-da-da, mum-mum-mum) but I'm not convinced you know they mean anything. D insists you said "ca-ca-ca" when pointing at the cat the other day but it hasn't been repeated.

I am very conscious of only having two more months of you full-time. You are still a daily delight to us, precious girl.

23 February: proud mama footnote: Daddy wins, the "ca-ca" is now distinct, spontaneous when you see the cat walk by, or upon seeing a picture of a cat in a book, or if we ask "who says meow"? So sweet and smart.