I can’t believe Eleanor is almost a year old. I can’t wait to throw her first birthday party. Plans are already in the works and her party dress has just arrived in the mail.

I realize that it has been a few months since I posted a thorough update on Eleanor. So here is a not so brief list of what she has been up to lately:

She is getting big and tall. She is wearing 18-month size clothes. We think she is about to have a growth spurt. She is eating almost twice as much as usual at every meal.

She is still into the pureed foods. For a little while she seemed like she had lost interest and only wanted finger foods, but now she usually just plays with the finger foods, including throwing them on the floor, but is eating the purees without complaint. We have always only given her organic foods. We like the Gerber Organics and Earth’s Best Organics. Her favorites are sweet potatoes and winter squash right now. When she actually eats some real food she likes cut up soy dogs, beans, steamed butternut squash, and steamed broccoli. She also seems to really like risotto and orzo pasta, which I’ve been making with butternut squash or sweet potatoes.

We still haven’t found a sippy cup that she will drink from. She just wants to play with them and spill as much water out of them as she can. She has, however, become very proficient at using a normal cup. Her spills are only when she decides to throw the cup after taking a drink or when she decides that she has taken too large a gulp and dribbles it right back out of her mouth and onto her shirt.

She is sleeping about 12 hours a night. Her bedtime is 7:30pm so she wakes up in the morning at around 7:30am. She is still taking two naps a day. The first is at 9:30 or 10am and the second around 3pm.  Lately her morning naps have been very long, about 2 hours and then her afternoon nap is about 30 minutes, occasionally she skips her afternoon naps.

We are still nursing three times a day, before each nap and at bedtime. I also pump a bottle in the mornings so she can have milk for her oatmeal. We discovered a few months ago that she has a cow’s milk allergy (she broke out in hives and had terrible diaper rash), which is common in younger babies, so we are sticking with breastmilk for a while. We will try to reintroduce cow’s milk in a few months.

She still has just six teeth. We are still waiting on the bottom lateral incisors to show up.

She is working on the walking. Her record is 7 steps but usually it is 3 or 4 at a time occasionally we’ve seen 5, but she prefers to do her walking when no one is watching. If she sees us watching she loses concentration and falls over or just sits down and starts to crawl.

She loves music, especially The Jackson Five, the X-Files theme music, and, of course, the Sesame Street theme song.

She still has no interest in television.  We are happy about that. We put Sesame Street on in the morning because she likes the songs and we love the guest stars, but after the song is over she might pay attention for a minute or two, but then is off to play with her toys.

She is a ball of energy. She never sits still for more than 30 seconds. It is near impossible to get her dressed without chasing her around the room, or change her diaper without her flipping over or standing up multiple times.

She loves her books. Her favorite right now is Dog by Matthew Van Fleet. She makes us read it to her 4 or 5 times a day.  At naptime her favorite is Miss Spider’s Tea Party: the counting book by David Kirk. And at bedtime she loves Sandra Boynton’s Pajama Time! and Goodnight Moon (which I have memorized by the way, reciting it is a fabulous party trick).

She loves clapping, tummy kisses, playing peekaboo, being chased around the house, and putting everything she finds into her mouth.

Her word count is up to about 8, she says “mama” and “dada” (and knows who she is referring to; mama is also her word for milk, and dada is also her word for dog), “up,” “ba” (in reference to her ball), “hi,” and “bye, bye.”  The last two are accompanied by a wave, usually with both hands, and occasionally she will throw in a blown kiss.

She can respond to requests including “give that to mama please,” “put your arms up” (when taking off her shirt), “give mama a kiss” (she has yet to master the fine art of pursed lip kissing, kisses are always open-mouth, sometimes with tongue), “go get your ball,”  “where is your elephant/lion?” (she points to her stuffed elephant or lion), “what sound does an elephant make?” (she makes a sort of elephant/motor boat noise).

She understands what “no” means, but doesn’t yet seem to be able to conform her behavior accordingly.  They say that babies of this age don’t yet have impulse control.

She is very adventurous. She wants to explore everything in the house and every place we go.  She has just discovered that she can use toys as step stools to climb up on any piece of furniture, including chairs, coffee tables, end tables and side tables.

She is very social. She wants to wave at and talk to every person we see.

She points at everything she sees and asks “eh?”