Month 11

I am super in love with this child! I feel like I start every blog post that way, but it's true. So there. Anyway, here are Aubrey's stats at 11 months:

• She loves watching us cook and will often cry at our feet until we pick her up and give her a good view of the action.
• You know how they put pictures of babies on diaper and wipe boxes? Well Aubrey is very social, and she actually "talks" to the babies on the box. It's sooo cute.
• She kisses herself in the mirror and has been known to randomly kiss other babies and sometimes their mommies.
• Somehow, "da-da" has become the word for everything--Daddy, balloons, going up the stairs, the front door opening, etc.
• She likes to hold her board books up to her face and "read" them to herself.
• When she dances, she pretty much just flings one of her arms back and forth. There's also some bouncing and head banging sometimes, but the arm is the real focus.
• Eating. Meal times are a challenge with Aubrey; it's the only time I get truly annoyed with her. She's not super interested in bottles anymore, so I often have to encourage her to finish them. And then, if she's had a bottle within a few hours of meal time, she won't eat her food very well. In these times, she either pushes the food away or spits it out if we feed her. If we give her finger foods, she throws everything on the ground. (The water also always ends up on the ground... I think she thinks it actually belongs there.) During these moments, I sometimes break down and sit on the ground to feed her as she plays. This is not a habit we want to encourage.
• She really wants to feed herself with a spoon, but she can't. She just ends up rubbing it around in the food and licking off any essence of the food that gets on the spoon. We're starting to work on teaching her to use utensils. 
• In general, you kind of have to guess what food she wants. She cares now. If you guess wrong, you're picking food off the floor. It's so frustrating wasting the food and spending the time preparing it for nothing. Her favorite foods these days are peaches, pears, peas, rice, pasta, cheese/veggie puffs, and bananas. If she really likes what she's eating, she'll chipmunk it in her cheeks instead of swallowing. 
• She tries to feed us sometimes. We always decline.
• I used to put her exersaucer in the doorway of the bathroom when I wanted to shower or get ready. She would play on the landing of the stairs or in her room, and I could keep an eye on her. But then she realized she could crawl through the bottom of the exersaucer to get into the oh-so-fun-and-forbidden bathroom. *Sigh*
• She has become much better with her little walker thing, backing up and making turns like a pro. She likes to make the circle around the wall between the kitchen and the living room over and over again.
• When the camera on the phone flashes, it kind of lasts for a few seconds before actually taking the picture. When she sees the flash, she gives a cheesy grin and scrunches her eyes closed. I have no idea how she knows to do this.
• She likes to put the top of her head against the dishwasher to feel the vibrations when it's running. Little weirdo.
• Her current favorite songs are "Give, Said the Little Stream" and "Popcorn Popping."
• She loves to shake her head back and forth really quickly and smiles so cute if you do it with her. I always get too dizzy to keep going for long, but she could go forever.
• Climbing the stairs is still a favorite pastime, and we have a little game we play as she does it. I follow behind her just in case she falls, and she turns around to look at me. When she does, I go "Muah!" right in her face, and she laughs. She'll turn around every couple of stairs to do it. Oh, and when we get to the top of the stairs, she knows to close the gate. Sometimes she tries to close it on me, which is less helpful.
• She has started to put things in rather than just taking things out. She keeps putting Daniel's keys in her toy bucket, for instance, which is fun for him when he has to rummage through it at 6:00 a.m. to get to work.
• On March 4th, she decided that she was finally ready to walk. Before that day, she would walk while holding onto things and occasionally take a solitary step or two, but it wasn't until the 4th that she really got going. She just randomly started walking across the room on her own, taking a dozen or so steps at a time. I'm super lame, and it actually made me tear up a little watching her. She gets so proud of herself when we cheer her on. How sweet is that?
• Though she still pushes away most of the time when you try to hug her, she has started giving actual, for-real hugs on her own. Just a couple of days after she started walking, she kept coming over to me and putting her arms around my neck and just hugging me. Again, I teared up. I've wanted that for so long! She also leans her head against us sometimes as a mini-hug, but the real deal is the best ever. I love feeling her squeeze me tight! 
• Like most kids, she's afraid of the vacuum. I use this fear as an opportunity for more hugs. I know; I'm shameless. But hey, it's the best feeling ever to know that she takes comfort from me. That wasn't always the case.
• One of her favorite toys is her Little People pirate ship. She has pirates and princesses to go with it, and she likes it when I shoot them out of the canon. She'll play with it for a good while if we play with her.
• She has randomly started to put things on her head and let them fall off. If it's something made from cloth, she drags it over her head toward her back and lets it fall.
• One of her favorite books, "Horns to Toes and In Between" describes the different body parts, and on one of the spreads it shows 10 fingers on the left page and then says, "We can tickle, tickle, tickle..." on the right page. I always tickle her at that part, and she knows to expect it now, to the point where when I'm counting the 10 fingers, she starts kicking her feet excitedly and smiling. I love reading her that book.
• She likes to throw things down the stairs by shoving them through the railing.
• Don't ask me why, but she always tries to eat our feet. We don't let her ('cause duh).
• She always laughs when I'm holding her and pretend to drop her as I say, "Oops!" Love that little laugh.

Okay, I'll stop now. One month left until Aubrey is a 1-year-old! Crazy.