11 Months

Dear Kaylee Marie,
You are 11 months old today! Only one more little month and you will be a whole year! I know it is probably because I am your mom (and I am sure all moms think this way), but I think you are the smartest baby on this entire plant! You have grown and changed so much I feel I need to write a novel, but I will try to just mention the highlights.

You have mastered WALKING, little one. What a big accomplishment and you absolutely love walking.You also try running sometimes. You have this game you play with Papi that he hides behind the corner and you walk down the hall. When you get close to him he jumps out and chases you. You turn around and run until you fall and crawl away, laughing the entire time. The only thing you love more than walking is dancing and baby girl, you have some amazing moves! You dance while sitting, standing, or squatting. you never miss any opportunity to dance!

You also love to let mommy have a turn. When I read you a book you have that has textured pages you like to hold my pointer finger in your hand and make me touch the texture so I can feel it too. When you eat or drink anything you like to hold it out so I can taste it. You like to turn off the light and sometimes you reach for my finger and make me turn off the light. You love to include me and I love that about you!

You are an amazing communicator and not just with words (more on that later). The other day you had your first big fall while walking. You were walking out of your room when you fell and bumped your head on the door frame. You cried, I snuggled you and all was well again. You then looked at me, walked to the door, pointed to it, squatted down and in slow motion gently bumped your head against the same spot you bumped it before. You then looked right at me and pointed to the door frame again as if to say, "that is what happened!"

Things You Like: Blowing on dandelions. In fact you love it so much that sometimes you try to blow other random flowers hoping the petals will blow away like the dandelion seeds. You love the palm trees in our front yard, seriously you just love them! You love airplanes and get excited and point to the sky whenever one goes by. You also love opening and closing your hand. You do this when saying, "bye bye", but you also like to do it when I sing a little song about opening and closing our hands.

Things You Dislike: You are a pretty easy going kid, but you absolutely are hitting that, "I do it" stage. You want to do everything yourself and get frustrated when you can't. You like to hold your own glass to drink water and you are pretty good at it, but then you want mommy's glass and if I say, "no" you get pretty upset at me because you want to do everything I do.

New Words: Oh, how you love to talk and you seem to learn words so quickly. Here are your newest words: no no (you make your mouth really tiny for this and you wag your little finger), do do (with a hard O) for pato (duck in Spanish), do do (with a soft O) for dog. You also know what sound a dog makes, "woof woof". You can say 11 words and you are only 11 months old! See, I may just be on to something with this smartest baby ever thing...