Vivian is eleven months!

I am astonished that a whole year has almost passed!  This has been a very quick year for me.  Perhaps it’s been because I have more to think about than ever before! 

Vivian is showing more and more of her personality each day.  She has really shown that she is not only a little drama queen, like every girl is, but she is also quite playful and a little ham!  She loves to play peek-a-boo and hide around the corner and pop out at us.  She discovered that the drapes are very fun to play peek-a-boo with yesterday (much to my dismay) and entertained us with her hiding and waiting until she was sure we didn’t know where she was and then popped out and laughed.  It was very cute.  Her most favorite time to play peek-a-boo though is right before her naps when I’m trying to get her to calm down and I’m trying to rock her to sleep…she has other ideas and always tries to distract me with her cuteness.

She has been standing on her own for short periods for a week and started this the day before she turned 11 months. I guess this is a sign that she’s getting closer and closer to walking, but so far, no first steps.  She is still much more interested in cruising and crawling.  I don’t blame her because she is a  super fast crawler—faster than Christian ever was for sure.

Vivian’s most favorite thing of all is water.  She LOVES water!  She loves water bottles, and to go swimming in water, and taking showers with her daddy and she LOVES the tub!  Anytime she sees the bathroom door open, she makes a break for it and crawls as quickly as she can to the tub.

Vivian has an iron grip.  When Dayna and Jeff were here for Thanksgiving, Dayna was holding her while sitting on a stool.  When Dayna went to stand up, Vivian was still holding on to the stool and took it with her and wouldn’t let go until the stool was dangling a  foot above the floor.  Her iron grip comes in very useful since she likes have things in her hand all the time and drag them around with her.  Her most favorite thing to get her hands onto are bottles…especially little ones like sample shampoo bottles or lotions.  Her iron grip also helps her hang onto mommy as she has grown more shy of strangers this month (I’m hoping it’s just the stress of the move and will relax soon) and she wants mommy to hold her a lot.

Vivian is a really good eater.  She loves to try new foods, especially if it is something her family members are eating.  Sometimes, she gets upset when she thinks everyone else is having something without giving her a bite and she is very distraught and vocal about it.  Her favorite thing to eat at the moment is cheese.  She has figured out that cheese sticks are one of the delights of humankind and so she insists on having her own and she can eat it quite quickly.

Vivian has become more an more darling as she approaches her first year, her curls are really coming in and her eyes are a lovely shade of blue and fringed with beautiful dark lashes she gets from her daddy.  When I was shopping for Thanksgiving, she started crying as soon as I reached the checkout and the boy who was bagging said “Don’t cry little girl” and she stopped crying and looked at him with her beautiful blue eyes and a little pouty mouth and he grabbed his heart and said “Man, you are going to break hearts with those eyes when you grow up!”

She is such a cute little girl.  She LOVES babies and baby dolls!  We ended up buying her a baby doll when we went to the store and she saw it and pointed at it and I handed it to her to see if that’s what she liked and she was so excited about it, she wouldn’t let me put it back and started squawking until Jared came down the aisle and broke down and told me we’d better get her the doll.  Lol.  It’s funny to see what a sucker Jared is for her whims already.

Along with baby dolls, she really is drawn to clothing, and loves to “help” me as I fold clothes…she’s especially drawn to her own clothing which I think is a good sign that she likes it or at least thinks the colors are nice.  It’s partially because of this that I’ve noticed she is really is drawn to the color pink and if I give her a choice of something pink and something not I can pretty much count on her picking the pink thing.

    

Of course, Vivian is not perfect, she still is not a good sleep yet.  She used to be amazing and she still sleeps pretty much through the night but it’s the getting to sleep that is driving me nuts.  The other thing that we need to work on is that she is terrible about obeying the word “no” whenever I tell her “no” she laughs at me.  Christian used to cry.  She must think that my “stern voice” is hilarious because she just laughs and laughs when use it and I say “no” and it makes me crazy.  I’ve actually been considering time-outs to get her to understand, but where on earth do mom’s do time-outs if their baby is less than one?  Maybe I’m just crazy thinking it might sink in.

Christian and Vivian are starting to be able to play a little bit with each other now though mostly it’s side-by-side playing where she takes what he’s playing with and then gets mad and screams at him for touching the thing she’s playing with.  It’s got to be tough being a big brother to an almost one-year-old.  He’s really quite good with her and loves her tons.

Overall, Vivian is lots of fun and I’m so glad that she’s a part of our family.  I’m so happy to have a girl and a boy and now that we have a house, I’m excited to decorate their rooms to go with their different personalities.  I’m so blessed with my two darling children.