10 months old and sleeping through the night

It's been raining a lot here lately, like it's supposed to this time of year. Reservoirs are still down quite a bit, but this is helping a lot. We got 4.7 in of rain in the last 7 days. The rainy days are always interspersed with sunny breaks, which are really pretty with the dark clouds and wet hillsides. I was lucky enough to catch this rainbow from our parking lot during one of the breaks.


Anja is 10 months old today! She has been walking for a month now and is pretty good. Of course, that just means she is even faster than she used to be. She never crawls anymore. She climbed into our big orange chair and stood up the other day (I was right there)! And today she started chasing the dog around the living room.

We took Anja out for Mexican food tonight. Well, maybe it was more for us, but she did have some Spanish rice and refried beans. She was more interested in the huge ceramic sun face on the wall above her. She is really good in restaurants. Unless we take her out way past her bedtime (9:00 or so), she generally has a good time. She really likes new people and places. She actually looks pretty subdued in the first video because it was a little past her bedtime.




Anja is eating a lot more solid food these days. We've been more adventurous, adding exciting items like eggs, cheese, meat and pasta. She is still not really into mealtime, but she doesn't outright refuse to eat anything right now, so we just keep adding new things gradually. And when she's done, she's done:


So a couple of weeks ago Anja started periodically skipping her 4am feeding. We discussed starting to wean her off it entirely, when she just started sleeping through the night on her own! For the last 8 nights she has slept from 7:00pm until 6 or 7 in the morning. And she now takes two, two-hour naps a day most days. She is really good at going down for naps, too. When she looks tired I put her in her crib, give her a pacifier and her "taggie", and 95% of the time she's right out.

I put the TV on this funny kids' show with oversized stuffed animal costumes. Look how a TV program captures even a 10 month old:


Jay said the other day that Anja is now as smart as Blue. She knows names of people and some of her toys. It's really fun to watch her slowly understand more of what we are saying.