Letter to Lissi on her 10 month bday

Dear Lissi,

My beautiful 10-month-old girl! Every day you are more beautiful and full of more and more personality. You love to make the silliest expressions/actions just to entertain. These faces include sticking out your tongue, crinkling up your face, making silly clicking noises with your mouth, squealing, and flapping your arms like a bird over and over.

Recently you have been expanding your communication skills. You have said your 1st real word, “mama” and mommy is thrilled! You call out “mama” when mommy leaves the room or enters the room. You can make the “d” and “g” sounds. Daddy is quite proud that you can say “dada”. You sometimes imitate syllables like “ma” after mommy says “more”. You are starting to imitate gestures. You will wave to people, clap hands, and give people high-5’s when you have a model. You understand some routine phrases such as “not for you”, “not for eating”, “hands up”.

You are an excellent eater and now have no difficulties bringing very small foods to your mouth with either hand. You are eating table food 3 meals a day. Like your mommy, your favorite foods seem to be starches like bread, waffles, cookies, etc. You have learned how to drink from a straw (you practice in the bathtub) but usually spit the water back out again. You also now view your spoon as a play toy and will bite on it and won’t let mommy remove it from your mouth. You laugh and laugh when she tries to pull it.

You continue to crawl very quickly around the house. You love chasing your brother all over the place. Stairs do not hinder you at all. In fact, you can go up and down the stairs quite quickly. You are also an expert at flipping from any position onto your knees and then standing up against a wall, table, bathtub. Mommy has to “assist” you to sit down in the tub at least 10 times every time you bathe since you keep trying to stand up.

You went swimming for the first time this month. You went in a hotel pool, a “warm” tub, and Grandma’s swimming pool. You loved swimming each time. You splashed and laughed. You tried to lunge out of mommy’s arms and wanted to race across the pool. On your first swimming experience, your cousin said you were a better swimmer than your big brother!

You also went on your first vacation this month. We traveled to Nevada, Sacramento, and the Bay Area to visit your aunties, uncles, cousin, Grandparents, Great-Grandpa, and friends. You were often very nervous about the new people for a day or two, but warmed up to most everyone. You even did great around the dogs and took them in stride.

We are so proud of your growth and development and the fun personality you are developing. You are a wonderful little girl and we love you so much!

Love, Mommy and Daddy