Eleven-month-old Maren

Friday was Maren's eleven month birthday. I can't believe that she is almost a year old! At eleven months, she is more expressive than ever. She is able to communicate a lot with pointing and sounds, and has even started saying a few words. She is not super consistent, but she says all sorts of things, like ball, hat, duck, baby, mama, dada, apple, bubbles, bear, and I'm not sure what else. Of course most of these sound nothing like the actual words, with the exception of mama and dada. She is crawling faster and faster, and standing up with just a little support. She had four teeth come in in the past month, and can now bite things like apples and peaches. She is acting more and more like a kid and less like a baby.

We are continuing to work on sleep, and although we are having ups and downs still, it seems like things are starting to improve. It seems like it is a little harder to make changes to sleep for Maren compared with how it seems to go for other babies. We are not doing a quick cry-it-out approach, so we knew it would take longer, but Maren is expressive of her opinions about things. She is quite expressive about her displeasure with some of the changes we have been making to sleep. However, we have been very consistent, and have been working with some of the changes for a long time now, and as she is getting more used to the routine she is liking it better. This morning we had a huge triumph where she went to sleep for a nap in her crib with about ten seconds of fussing, and stayed asleep for over an hour. She has never napped in her crib for that long. The magic was not repeated for her afternoon nap, but I think we are making slow steady progress. 

She is a joyful little baby, and we love every minute that we spend with her :-)