Madison: 10 months

I couldn't decide which picture I liked best.  So precious.  She is such a joy.  

What's new...
Her top right tooth FINALLY broke through at the end of July.  Seriously, I am over with this whole teething thing.  The past few months, she's been fussy for no reason sometimes, she will get slight fevers randomly, she puts most things in her mouth, and she doesn't like us to get near her mouth or touch her teeth.

Our active little one does not like being strapped down for long (surprise, surprise) whether that's in a stroller, car seat, and sometimes the ergo carrier.  We have to provide plenty of distractions, especially when it's just her and I in the car.  She hates being in the car seat for much longer than 15 minutes unless she has something to eat, an interesting toy, Yo Gabba Gabba on the ipad, or one of us to sit back there with her.  I can't remember the last time we drove somewhere together and Bryce and I sat together up front.  Welcome to parenthood haha.

She still LOVES bath time, doing and eating anything that we are, climbing up and down the stairs, and giving kisses to her favorite stuffed animals.  She loves playing the "so big" game (I say "How big is Madison?" and she reaches her arms as high as she can and I say "soooo big!")  It always makes her smile.  If she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed (or crib?), a book ALWAYS cheers her up.  She loves books, especially turning the pages.  She loves to play chase or tag with me.  She gets super excited when Daddy comes home from work and says "dada! dada!"

At the beginning of August (about 10.5 months old), she took her first steps.  First, it was 2 steps, then 4 steps, then 8 steps, then 10.  She has stuck around 10 steps now and still defaults to crawling since it's more efficient.

Here are some fun videos from this month:

Back in mid July, she learned how to stand up on her own.  She practiced it for a few weeks...



One day when Daddy was home for lunch...



We practice a lot... (she was being really silly that night)


Then by mid August, here she is, taking her first steps (just before she turned 11 months old)...



She still needs quite a bit of confidence and practice, but she is a fast learner!  It is so fun to see her walk!  Now she wants us to hold one of her hands and walk all over the place.  When she wants to get somewhere by herself, she definitely crawls still.  She crawls much faster than she walks!

It seems like her hair grew a ton this month. Clapping and high fives, still waving and kissing, hide and seek with stuffed animals, dancing to music...such a character.

A lot of funny faces while we wait on these teeth to come through!

Eating
She basically eats 3-4 "meals" a day and then snacks throughout the day.  She still takes 4-5 bottles a day (usually 4-5 oz. formula).  She is eating less baby food and more of what we eat.  Although we still don't give her a ton of meat (not for any reason, it's just easier to give her fruits, veggies, and dry cereal.  She's not a picky eater at this point, thank goodness.

In the last month or so, she started squinting her eyes and scrunching her nose when she laughs

I love that little smirk!

When she sleeps, her lips are very pouty and cute

She looks more like a little girl than a baby here, to me

First spaghetti (which she loves)

Loves that book that has a music button.  She now understands what "push the button" means. 

Sleeping
She still takes 2 naps a day, but her morning nap is shrinking to 30-40 minutes instead of 1.5 hours.  Her afternoon nap is 1.5-2 hours.

Growth:

Birth - 6 lb 3 oz , 20 inches

1 month - 8 lb , 21.5 inches

2 months - 8 lb 14 oz , 23 inches

4 months - 12 lb, 4 oz, 24 inches

6 months - 15 lb, 12 oz, 25.75 inches

9 months - 18 lb, 5 oz, 27.5 inches

(I know she's around 19-20 lbs now...definitely catching up to other kids her age now!)

Mini vacation for 4th of July

For the 4th, we took advantage of the long weekend and went to Bend, Oregon.  It's about 3 hours away from Portland.  It's in the dry area of Oregon or "high desert" where it doesn't rain like it does here.

It was such a fun town with absolutely beautiful surroundings.  We really want to go back and go skiing!  Mt. Bachelor is right there and is known for great skiing.

The first day we were there, we went to Smith Rock State Park.  It was so pretty.

We hiked the misery ridge trail which was about 1 mile straight up.  It reminded me of Sharp Top in Virginia on the Blueridge Parkway.  We had a picnic lunch and then drove to a couple different spots for Bryce to do some fly fishing.

Can you guess which one is Misery Ridge? :-)

It was hard to take your eye off of those rock climber on Monkey Face Rock!

Good little hiker, as usual.

The next day, somehow, Bryce talked me into hiking South Sister.  "Yeah, it's a hard hike, but we'll be fine."  After about 10 miles, which had us going on 5 hours of hiking already, we got almost to the top of the 3rd highest peak in the state of Oregon.  That's when we made the very wise decision of turning around.  It was 9 hours of hiking.  With a 10 month old in a hiking backpack.  Needless to say, I was not very friendly or talkative most of the way up.  Can I just say that we were actually hiking on a glacier for a little bit?  South Sister has 8 glaciers and one that is the largest glacier in Oregon. And the trail was so rocky that there were points where you had to use all fours to scramble up without slipping.  Sour, tired, blistered, and grumpy would all be words we could use to describe me that day.  (and I wasn't even carrying the baby!)  I know it was really fun for Bryce, though, and he had been wanting to get out hiking for awhile.  I was definitely a happier camper when I knew we were headed down instead of up :-)  If we had kept going to the top, which was probably going to be the most rugged stretch to hike, we would've been hiking down in the dark.  My vote was an obvious "no" with images of a screaming baby and probably some crying myself.  In the end, Bryce had a great time only wishing he had reached the summit and I was glad we did it.

Hiking with a baby means multiple stops to play and crawl around.

This is where we decided to turn around.  Good thing because I only had a couple ounces of formula left!

Snacks keep everyone happier.

Teardrop Pool was beautiful.  Highest lake in Oregon.  The water was unreal.

You can see with this map that we made it all the way to Teardrop Pool. 

The rest of the weekend was more relaxing around Bend.  Bryce surprised me the next day with a manicure (to make up for the rough day).  We hung out by the hotel pool for a few hours.  We also found a couple really good restaurants.

We walked around parks and downtown.

Madison really liked hanging out in the room and rolling around on the bed.

Sporting her first ponytail (that lasted 2.5 seconds)

After the hard hike, we went to Jackson's Corner.  It was a really cute little place with live music, incredible brick oven pizza, generous leafy salads, and coolers of wine and beer.

Bryce: Why do you need to take a picture of food again? Madison: I want some pizzaaa!

Gelato "flight" 

Another place we tried was Spork.  It was a little random, but so delicious.  The food was really unique.  It actually used to be a food cart, but was so popular that they opened a restaurant.  Check out the menu.  Apparently the chef goes on 6 month long business trips to get inspiration for his food all around the world.  His recent trip was Thailand so the food had a Thai twist mixed with Latin American ideas.  My favorite was the corn cob.  It took me right back to the streets of Mexico when I studied abroad.

Grilled sweet corn with lime butter, smoked paprika, cotija cheese, green onion, citrus chili mayo, and cilantro.  It was a mouthful of flavors

Too bad we can't take more long weekends now that Bryce has a real job...being the wife of a Ph.D. student definitely had it's perks of flexible schedules and more days off.  But of course, I'm really thankful for his job and how much he's enjoying it!

Portland Saturday Market

I love living near a pretty big city.  We lived right outside of DC for a year, but it seemed like such a hassle to go into the city.  One time, we decided to spend a few hours in the city on a Saturday, and not only did the 8 mile drive take us almost an hour, but we ran into a motorcade of black SUVs and were stuck in crazy traffic trying to get out of the city.  Not so fun.  Portland is a little different.  I can drive 25 minutes into downtown, find a parking spot, feel pretty safe, and then drive 25 minutes home (I don't think rush hour is as easy, but we've avoided it so far).

I continually look up restaurants and places I want to go in the city since it's a "foodie" town.  And Bryce, who would always rather be hiking up a mountain, reluctantly but lovingly says, "Yeah, we'll have to try it."  We finally had a very Portland-y day a couple weeks ago.  We got lunch at a foodtruck, walked to the waterfront, ate and people-watched, then walked around the market.

We opted for some greek gyros which ended up doused with a little too much sriracha.

The city of bridges

There are a lot of really fun fountains around the downtown area.  

There was a hoola-hooper, a knife thrower, and a few good street bands among other things such as tents with delicious frozen chocolate dipped bananas, donuts, beer, and sandwiches.  

Not impressed with the knife thrower

I wanted to try Voodoo donut, mainly because of all the hype about it, but the line was practically around a city block.  Bryce voted no.  How good can a donut really be?  I hoped that one day, I would find someone to wait in line with me to try it.  Just once because it is so well known and touristy for Portland.

Breakfast area

If you were to come over and eat some waffles with blueberries and maple syrup (because everyone loves waffles, right?), you would sit here.

Welcome to our little breakfast nook.

Before:

Love our birdfeeder right outside so we can watch the birds while we eat.  Thanks, Dad!

Table & chairs: Thrift store find

Light: Home Depot (It was one of the very few that Bryce liked and it just so happened to be one of the cheapest...

Placemats & napkins: Crate & Barrel

Seat cushions: Ikea

Paint: Clary Sage by Sherwin Williams