Cora at 10 months

Cora is a-growing and a-changing over here!

Moving
- Pulls up, but doesn't cruise
- Crawls all over; she has a normal crawl and a modified army crawl that she pulls out when she's wearing a dress :)
- She just started liking to pull up on the toilet, but otherwise, she's ignored the stairs for the most part (with the exception of this picture) and isn't too destructive

Eating
- She continues to nurse frequently (like 7-8 times each day), loves her a sippy cup of ice water, and has moved into a pretty good phase with solids.  She went through a period around 9 months where she seemed to lose interest in solids, but now her appetite is back.  Favorite foods as of late are bananas, sweet potato wedges, ravioli, cheese, bread, butternut squash, and oatmeal (she can feed herself with a spoon if we load the spoon for her).

Sleeping
- This has been another rough month.  We resorted to letting her cry it out because we would put her down, pat her backside, and then as soon as we backed away, she'd pull herself up in her crib and start crying.  For the first week or two, we were going in every 5-10 minutes and she would only ultimately fall asleep in those intervals where we were in the room.  This past week she will actually fall asleep within about 5-10 minutes of crying and without us laying her down, so I guess that is progress.
- She is waking 2-3 times a night.  We have tried having Jacob go in and try to get her back to sleep and this occasionally works, but usually she's insistent on nursing, so most nights I just nurse her since then she'll go right back to sleep.  Our perfect sleeper has majorly regressed in the last 3 months, but there is no obvious reason (we've tried varying bedtimes, sleep routines, feeding her more, etc.), so we just are hoping she'll turn a corner soon!

Talking
- First definite word was "Jack-Jack" (or dja-dja) followed in the last day or so by definite "ma-ma" for me and "da-da" or "da-dee" for Jacob.  She's made those sounds for a while but now she is saying them for us.  Her favorite word/sound is "hi" and she waves and says it to most people.  She was a flirt at Disney World and we were like a welcoming committee everywhere we went with people waving and saying hi back :)

Personality
- I no longer think of her as a peaceful, easy going baby.  She is outgoing, very determined, and very social.  She loves to interact and is 100% confident with others as long as her momma or daddy is close by.  She is happy and a smiler.  She loves, loves, loves to be near her brother and to watch him play and pick up the same toys he has.   She has a cute way of craning her neck around to look you in the eye and she will often stretch out to watch something happening, so I'd call her curious too.

A few months back it was so hard to imagine Cora growing up and being a PERSON like Jack is.  That is starting to change as I see her becoming her own, unique being.  To me, she is the most beautiful, sweetest little girl.  At night, it's hard with the bedtime battles, but the rest of the day, she is full of so much joy!!