Month 11

This month, Piper officially reached the 11 month mark. It seems that every month when I go to write these monthly update, in my mind she hasn't changed much, but as I go back and read about her the month before it becomes very clear that she's learning more everyday!

In my last monthly post, I talked a lot about Piper's hair. You will just have to excuse that, but I was SO excited about having some hair to work with and it just seems to keep coming. Neither one of our children has Jes's hair, very, very thick and very, very dark. Mine is quite fine, but there's lots of it and a medium color. Caleb is this way and Piper is turning out to be this way too. As you can see she's had more come in and I can now just stick a bow in and it will stay!

As always, Piper is still just the happiest baby ever! The nursery workers at church and MOPS always marvel at how easily she transitions into her classrooms, when most of her peers are crying. I know that my time is coming, but if she is anything like her brother, it will be short lived. Thankfully, Piper is just a laid back and easy going as her sibling.

Some of the biggest news in our household are those two little white things that you see in Piper's mouth. In my 10 month update, I mentioned that her first tooth had finally broken through, but at that point it was only one and we couldn't yet see it. Well, now she's got both of her front central incisors and she loves them, exercising them on anything that gets near them. She has already used them on yummy snacks, but also various fingers and, more recently, my nose. They work fine, friends.

In health news, Piper has had this chronic cough that I have been trying to convince her doctors is related to allergies. It seemed completely plausible to both myself and Jes that she would inherit our allergies, especially with her birth happening right before some of the worst pollen counts that our area has seen in recent years. However, each and every doctor kept telling me that she was just too young to have allergies, to which I always replied, "bull". This past month I finally conviced the kids' pulmonologist to give us a trial run of an allergy nose spray for Piper, before we had to go through a bunch of expensive imaging of her airways. Well, the verdict? It worked. No more cough, no more snot, no more sneezing. Seems I was right. Again. Doctors: LISTEN TO THE MOTHERS! Ok, enough.

Piper has also learned to clap and wave bye bye this month as well. If there is clapping going on, she will clap, but will also do it if you say, "yay, Piper" to her. She smiles the biggest smile and will clap! When she waves, she does so with both hands facing toward her. It's just about the cutest thing I've seen!

This past month, we were invited to my mom's new company's picnic. The weather was fabulous, the food was even better and the company was the best. Piper really likes being outdoors, which is perfectly fine with us, as we don't like being cooped up in the house so much either. It will get easier when she can walk, but for now her ride is the stroller,

or her doting Daddy.

So, I don't think that I have mentioned in the past about Piper's deep and abiding hatred for dolls. This began at a very, very early age when my mom and I gave her a basic doll and she began attacking it. Piper would scream, yell, bite, hit, poke, throw, and get so mad at the doll that we would have to take it away from her and physically restrain her to calm her down. She has not only done this with us, but also at church and at MOPS and everyone has commented on this. I have tried to introduce this doll in the picture to her little by little and now she plays with it more than she attacks it. Hopefully, by this time next month she won't be so aggressive toward the poor defenseless doll, but it sure is funny and a good giggle for her Mama!

This past month Piper has finally mastered the art of crawling. She will get on all fours and crawl when she is trying to get somewhere, but will revert back to the army crawl when she's in a real hurry. Here she has discovered another use for her ExerSaucer, climbing underneath it over and over. Thank you Graco for a dual use toy!

I took Piper for her first swim this month as well. We are so blessed to have a community pool in our subdivision and it's just down the street so we can well! As you can tell she feel so pretty in her new swimsuit. I hope that when she's my age she feels this good in one too!

I invited 2 of my best mom friends to come to the pool with us and both kiddos were SO excited! Between the 3 of us, we had 5 kids, totally manageable, and so much fun!

I went out and bought Piper this new float for her to ride in in the pool. I really wanted to have a float that had a shade attached to it and found this adorable turtle one at WalMart! If you look you can see that her hands are sitting in a little pool built into the front of the float. This is meant to hold a little bit of water for the kiddo to splash around in while floating. Well, our little girl decided to put her face in the water too. I predict that she'll be an easy one to teach to swim!

Swimming was so much fun, but wore Piper out so much! This is a picture of her passed out in her stroller. What I didn't get a photo of was her asleep in the float as she glided along on the water. It was so relaxing for her that we'll be sure to get back to the pool soon!

I had to get a picture of her pruney little feet... So cute!

Another huge thing that Piper is doing in our house is sleeping in her own bed! Now, she's never been like her brother, sleeping in our bed, but really just craves her own space, sleeping in a Pack 'n Play next to our bed. We decided to try her in her crib early in May, expecting a fight, as we had with her brother. However, Piper proved us wrong and has slept all night long ever since! Praise the Lord!

Lastly, Piper is officially pulling up on everything and is cruising around all the furniture. Now that she's able to get up and reach things that are higher than the floor, we are constantly chasing her around trying to get whatever she has grabbed and absconded with from her. Most often it's a piece of paper, a cell phone, or a remote that she doesn't want to give up. Sometimes I just let her have whatever it is she's after, because, really, who can resist that face?!