Self feeding with a Spoon!

This is a fun and messy milestone! Joanna has learned how to feed herself with a spoon once it has been put in her hand! She's pretty good at it but tends to turn the spoon upside down and lose some of the food!

 

 

Joanna 10 Months Old

Weight: 17 pounds! Slowly but surely, she's growing!

Eating: Joanna eats ALL THE TIME! We are still nursing 8 times a day. She's got her daddy's appetite! She now loves self feeding so much that she hates to eat her purees because she can't feed herself. She still loves her cheerios and black eyed peas. One of her new favorite things to do is to feed others. She always offers her food to Maui, Mommy and Daddy!

Movement: We mastered the speed crawl! Joanna gets to where she wants to go and she gets there fast! Mama sure is getting a good workout chasing her all over the house. She loves to sneak into the bathrooms and Mommy and Daddy's bedroom when the doors are accidentally left open. Still walking on furniture, with push toys or holding Mommy or Daddy's hands. She occasionally stands on her own (a few times as long as ten seconds). No steps quite yet! We have a climber on our hands! I turn my head for one minute and she is climbing on boxes or anything she can!

Talking: This kid loves to talk, and sing! Lots of babbling but still no words. I have FINALLY heard mamama a few times but not consistently quite yet! Dadada is still the most common but we also hear a lot of "eeeeeeee" which means she wants to show us something. Joanna is very social and waves to everyone she sees everywhere we go. She sure makes a lot of people smile!

Teeth: Still just that one adorable bottom tooth!

Play: books are definitely still a favorite. I'm so happy that I have a reader! She loves to pull every single book of her shelf and sit on the floor surrounded by her books picking them up oohhh-ing and ahh-ing. 

Sleep: We started taking Joanna to a chiropractor to see if it would improve her sleep. Both Jason and I were pretty skeptical about whether or not it would help but overall we have definitely seen improvements! We are getting closer to having her consistently sleep 3 hours at a time which is huge compared to the 45 minutes she would sleep before! Naps are a whole other issue though. Naps are quite a challenge now and typically only happen in mommy's arms or the car.

***Warning: this blog post has A TON of pictures! She's just so cute it's hard to choose the best ones!

Christmas Card Pictures

Merry Christmas from the Ankumah-Saikoom Family!

Merry Christmas from the Klagos Family!

Joanna's First Tree Farm Experience with the Klagos Family

Every year its the same thing. Dad tells Mom to find out where the Balsams are. Mom finds out. We hike miles all over the entire property, eventually stumbling upon the balsams on the complete opposite side that we thought they were. We walk through rows of picked over Balsams arguing about whether or not the needles are flat and we are in fact looking at balsams. We can't find a good balsam. For a moment in time, we consider getting a Fraiser but quickly come to our senses and realize that would be absurd. Our family always gets balsams. But all the balsams are uneven, too skinny, have too many brown spots, too short, too tall or just flat out ugly. But then, all the sudden, after looking at thousands of trees, (that in my opinion all look exactly the same) we find the one. Somehow, there is one perfect balasm amongst all these terribly awful balsams. We (and by we I mean KC) cut the tree down, drag it back to the car, get it tied on and go home, so happy that we found the perfect balsam. Then we get home, get the tree off the car and put it in the tree stand only to find out the perfect tree wasn't so perfect after all. Apparently our freezing cold brains had looked at so many trees, balsams and all, that we could no longer discriminate between the perfect balsam tree and a deformed tree with two trunks. That's what we ended up with this year. A giant crooked balsam with two trunks. The tree is a hot mess. But at least its a balsam.


***I will add that as always, once the lights, ornaments and garland were so beautifully arranged on the tree by my mom, it looked great. Proving that it really doesn't matter what balsam we choose, they will all look the same in the end. But its all about the experience ;)