10 Months

2 more months before reaching her first birthday, and Spud certainly knows how to win your heart over.

She is certainly more pleasant to be with these days, and a hundred times calmer than she used to be as compared to even just 3 months ago.

Although the frequency of her day-time naps still averages about 2 in a day, she is now getting slightly better at it. By better I mean, Spud is now able to:

1. fall asleep in.the.daytime.in.her.own.bed. and no longer needed to be carried and rocked
2. not scream bloody murder for longer than necessary (less than 5 minutes) and fight her sleep less when she’s spent
3. sometimes stretches her nap to more than a full hour. (not all the time, but at least 1 out of 2 naps are at least an hour!)

It took all but more than 9 months for us to get there, and THATreally is one of the biggest milestones for us. On this, I don’t think we did anything particularly different to improve her sleep pattern. I think I can only attribute the improvement to the fact that when it comes to day time naps, Spud did what she did when she is ready. Of course, there is a chance that I’ll just be jinxing it by writing all this down. But then again, we have been so used to Spud not sleeping in the day-time that I think we will just be resigned to that fact if Spud ever reverts to her old ways again.

These days, Spud’s into big, slobbery kisses. She now officially has 4 teeth, and the top comes with Madonna's gapped front teeth! She was, however, a little off last weekend --- she drooled a lot, had a slight fever with a little bit of a snotty nose and did not want to eat or drink very much, which we eventually attributed to her teething since the only way she was comforted was when we gave her some frozen fruits in the mesh teether.

She likes playing rough, too. She laughs her hysterical laughter if you wrestle her down and nuzzle her stomach and armpits as she tries to pounce on you like a cat with her mouth wide open to give you her drolly kisses.

In the last 2 weeks, we noticed that Spud is able to point out to things she recognises. If we ask her where is Papa or where is Mama while looking at some of the pictures we framed, she will point out to our pictures accordingly. The same thing goes for Lenny the (Snowy) Leopard who is now her trusted bedtime buddy.

She does blabbers with a lot of grunting sounds and strange sounding noises that do not make any sense at all. She has also begun to shaking her head if she does not want anything. (which makes perfect sense!)

Nope. Spud’s not walking yet. She is still trying very hard to balance herself on 2 legs without support and we are still waiting for her to take that few steps to walking. She usually gives up after about 10 seconds and goes on all fours again, as I guess she does get around quicker that way.

Spud’s been quite a joy these days and at her 10th month update, I thought I’d leave you readers with a video taken a few weeks ago where she was just laughing her head off at my silly antics from behind my now-kapoot camera.

It warms my heart, this.

Enjoy. (I hope it buffers ok)