10 months old

My little girl is 10 months old today. It's difficult to grasp that in 2 months she will be one year old. That's just plain wrong. People keep asking me what we're doing for her first birthday. Big party? Family event? Family plus a few friends? I just can't give them an answer, so I just keep telling them "I don't know. I'm still in denial." Sometimes I just want to keep it a small affair, other times I'm thinking of party favor bags for the kids. It's kind of stressful, and this is one of the few birthdays that she's going to have no recollection of other than photos I show her. It's not like she cares. She's happy regardless. So all the stress is self-induced.At 10 months, Kate is right on the brink of 20 pounds. When we went in to the doctor for her arm, she weighed 19 pounds, 13 ounces. She has nearly doubled her birth weight at this point. She's wearing mostly 9 months clothes, although some of her 6-9 months stuff still fits. She can wear 12 months too, depending on the brand. She's about to move up a shoe size from 2 to 3. She's probably a 2.5 really, but they don't make half sizes in baby shoes.

Her favorite foods right now, other than Mommy's milk, are banana, Ritz crackers, and these fruit puff things we buy at the store with banana being the preferred flavor. The child really, really loves bananas. A lot of days I just throw mashed banana in with whatever I'm trying to get her to eat, and she'll eat it just fine. I just try not to think about how gross the combination might actually be to someone with more refined taste buds.

We are still breastfeeding and it's going well. I knew starting out that I wanted to hit the six month mark for sure, with a year a possibility. Now it looks like we will reach a year no problem. I am not sure how long we'll go beyond that. I guess it will depend on whether Kate ever decides she's finished and how I feel about a toddler breastfeeding. At least she's gotten much more efficient at it. I'm thankful that we have been able to go for so long.

Kate is now avidly cruising all over the house on any furniture she can pull up on. She can crawl really well, but if she can stand and cruise on the furniture she much prefers that method. she's taken steps without holding on to something several times, but she doesn't make this a habit. Occasionally she will be standing somewhere and let go of her support, but as soon as she realizes she's not holding on she grabs it right back.

We are still cloth diapering, of course. I guess I feel the need to update that because I remember getting so many looks from people when we made that decision. For us, it has been wonderful. I love, love, love her cloth diapers, and I can't really pinpoint why. They are just so easy, and so cute, and she rarely ever has any issues with redness because all of the moisture is pulled into the diaper rather than sitting against her skin. We haven't had to buy a single diaper in months, and we're only on our second bottle of Purex Free and Clear detergent because it just doesn't take a lot to clean the diapers. We even took the whole set of diapers on vacation and just did laundry at my father-in-law's when we needed to. We could have just as easily washed them at the hotel if we hadn't had a free washer available. I have picked a favorite brand out of all the diapers we have: Katydid Cloth. They are fabulous.