Emma is 10 months old!

Today Emma is ten months old! She is such a happy baby! She loves to be outside now that the weather has turned so beautiful the last few weeks. She loves to read and she will sit with her books and open them and turn the pages. She talks to the books and her other toys too. She likes to crawl under the kitchen table and hide, and then come crawling out as fast as she can, laughing the whole time. She’s learning to feed herself with her hands, and she prefers that to being fed with a spoon. She’s also now sleeping for 11 hours straight at night!! I never thought that would happen! She is also taking a lot of steps while holding onto the furniture. She says ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ and ‘kidy’, which I think means kitty. I have taught her how to do a back flip off my lap. She loves it! I tell her “want to do a flip?”, and she immediately starts to lean to back. I hold her hands and her legs go over her head and then she hops to the ground! Then she crawls up to my lap and wants to do it again.

I want to take this opportunity to record some of Emma’s nicknames that we have used in the last 10 months. The first one was Baby Poots of course, which our family blog is named after. We also called her Bean Bean before she was born, based on her shape during the first ultrasound. Once she arrived and we named her, Emmerkins became the nickname of choice. And then when we had so many problems learning to breastfeed (both Emma and I) I came up with “Little Miss Milk Maid” and “Little Miss Milky La Rue” to help me get through each feeding session. I know she will love those in about 13 years!

I really liked the “La Rue” and sometimes call her “Emmerkins La Rue”. There are also Emmers and Emmer-fish. I made a whole rhyme for Emmer-fish, she’s my little Emmer-squish, she’s my little Emmer-dish. Then Tony created “Boutros Boutros-Ghali Girl”. I don’t know how he came up with it, but we started singing it to Emma and it would always get a smile and stop the tears. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the Secretary-General of the UN in the 1990’s. I know it’s weird but it sounds so catchy and it really did make Emma smile. In the first few months of her life she would have very fussy evenings, crying for hours, and singing “Boutros Boutros-Ghali Girl” just worked. I am sure that I am leaving some out, but I’ll include them next time!