Barefoot baby!

As I said Claire has started walking. These past few days she has really started walking more and more. She is now split between 50% walking and 50% crawling. I love watching her walk across a room. She constantly jabbers and is usually holding something. Half the time I think she forgets where she is heading. I know being barefoot is the best for a new walker and she isn't really fond of shoes anyway, but she has such a small foot that finding actual walking shoes is a challenge. We went to Stride Right the other week since they are apparently the know alls in walking shoes to get her foot sized. Well, the lady said, "you will have to look online for her size because we don't carry walking shoes that small." Great, now I have to find a 2.5 for a "new walker". After doing some searching and finding most of the small selection of size 2.5 is ugly and extremely expensive. I decided to wait to buy shoes. My little baby will just have to be barefoot in the meantime. Not that she is complaining. Luckily she is barely in a 2.5 and most of her 2's still fit and the few 2's I do have will work in the meantime since we are mostly indoors. 

I absolutely cannot believe in almost 2 weeks she will be a year! How is this possible? It's like when you become a Mom time is suddenly going in warp speed. It is the weirdest thing. Before you become a Mom time goes "normal".  A year feels like, well a year. After having a baby a year feels more like 3 months. It is rather scary and exciting all at the same time.

At Claire's 9 month check up the doctor took her off her reflux meds. I was excited. Yay no more scheduling! Well I noticed over the past several months she has gotten increasingly fussy. I attributed most of this to cutting her molar teeth (which I know part of it has been due to the teeth). Everyone told me between 6-9 months they outgrow their reflux. In my head of course she has out grown it. Well, after really paying attention to her the last few weeks I started noticing she may not have actually outgrown it. The spitting up isn't there, but like once a week, but when I listen I can hear her swallowing back stuff and fussing. She has also wanted to nurse more like when she was a month old and it was bothering her. We were down to only 4 times of nursing a day and over the past few weeks she has been wanting to nurse nearly every hour. This is with eating 3 solid meals a day and having snacks. I know she wasn't hungry every hour. I finally got out of my denial and put all the signs together and called the doctor. She agreed it sounded like her reflux was still bothering her. She has been back on one of her meds (Zantac) for almost a week now and I cannot tell you how much of a difference it has made.  She still has her fussy moments, but she is finally the happy girl I know! This proves to me there is only a "normal" for your baby and "normal" does not apply to all  babies.

I know I am 2 weeks late in posting this, but here is the 11 month picture I took of her.

Walking!

Little bit is walking! She has been cruising for about 3 months and I was beginning to think she might just cruise forever. Eric and I have been encouraging her for weeks to let go, but her confidence just hasn't quite been there. I finally decided I would take a few weeks off from pushing her and realized just to let her do it in her time. She shocked the crap out of me and actually did it in her time when I was least expecting it. She took her first steps Tuesday August 9, exactly 1 week shy of 11 months. We are by no means a pro walker right now and still choose crawling as our main mode of transportation, but every day we walk a little more and a little further. She loves to practice standing on her own and when she gets fixated on practicing it she will not rest! When she really gets to going usually she gets over excited and tries to go faster and falls down. Luckily we never cry and usually giggle when we fall down. It's an exciting thing to watch her wobbly steps. I'm sure in a few weeks when she is sprinting I may have a different opinion, lol.

I also discovered 2 more teeth tonight for a grand total of 10!! I thought she was cutting her bottom canines, but when I actually looked in her mouth she cut 2 back molars! God knows the child loves her meat so that must be why he is giving her molars early. Unfortunately they are not all the way in yet so I am sure there are still some fussy days ahead. Luckily she hasn't been too fussy cutting them she just has had a few rough moments.
I leave you with a short video of her walking!