Letter to Rua - 10 months

August 5th 2015

Dearest Rua,

Hey beautiful big girl, you are ten months old! 

This month you...

• Officially left your adorable tummy crawl behind for the hands and knees crawl, often now the hands, one knee, and one foot crawl. You can move so fast too. Your favorite places to dart to are the bathroom (you have discovered how amazing the toilet paper roll is) and the big bookshelf. That bookshelf is probably your favorite place in the whole house, and you happily pull down books over and over and over again.

• You are cruising along furniture. No attempts to let go, but your balance is improving rapidly. You can easily hold on with one hand while to look around. You are much more confident and agile, up and down and all around you go.

• You like to dance and bounce up and down when you are standing. 
• You have the most adorable, mischievous grin. A favorite time to employ it is during bath time when you constantly pull yourself up to stand, looking at me slyly with a huge grin, laughing as I say, 'sit down Rua!'. You listen and sit down, but two second later, looking at me with that same grin, you are pulling yourself up again. This happens at least 20 times each bath. 

• You discovered stairs this month. We don't have any in our apartment so you just haven't been exposed to them. But we were visiting some friends and there were stairs. You noticed them right away and made a beeline for them. You knew exactly what to do and thought you were so clever to have figured it out. 

• Messes, you love to make messes. Pulling down books, ripping apart newspaper or any other paper you can get your hands on, pulling apart Abby's carefully put together puzzles (she doesn't like this one so much). If there is a mess to be made, you are on it.

• Messes of course extend to eating. Along with being messy while you eat though, you have started a new trick of throwing food on the floor. And your spoon. Drives me crazy. 

• Your favorite foods are: Hmmm, everything? You like fruits, especially melons and berries. You really like smoothies. You have mastered drinking through a straw so you just go at those smoothies.

• Dad was gone for a couple weeks this month and you were so glad when he came home. You could not stop grinning at him and wanted him to hold you constantly that day. It was great to see. 

• You went on your first camping trip and had a blast. You didn't roll around in the dirt nearly as much as you felt you should though, sorry about that. :)

And now here goes another month! 

Love you!!

Your Mamma