My mother’s day gift to myself is permission to write this blog post, even though there are still plenty of other things around the house I should be doing. I also have about 5 other posts swimming around in my head that will hopefully be coming shortly, but for now let’s focus on another Hayden update.

I cannot believe she turned 10 months old this past week. It’s very sad to me that she will be 1 soon, but this is also such a fun phase to observe.

Here’s what Hayden’s up to:

- Crawling very very fast.

- Getting very good at standing independently, but not so interested in walking. Seems to enjoy pushing around her walker, though.

- Climbing all over everything. Just discovered the stairs last week (no baby gates up in the new house yet), and was fascinated by how high she could get just by climbing up 2 steps. Of course she had no idea how to get back down.

- Loving mommy. It brightens my day every time a walk into a room and see her face light up with a huge smile. She does this sometimes for Maddy and Dave also, but I enjoy how frequently I get those special smiles.

- Adoring her big sister and loving when Maddy interacts with her. Today they started playing a “game” which involved them bonking heads over and over again. Surprisingly they kept the impact low and there were no tears, only hysterical laughter from both girls every time their heads touched. I must get a video of Hayden’s latest laugh.

- Perfectly content playing independently as long as she’s not trapped in her playpen and has plenty of great toys to eat.

- Has developed a wonderful pageant wrist wave, which she employs constantly.

- 4 teeth now with a big gap between her top 2.

- Much less stranger anxiety. Still doesn’t especially want to be left alone with strangers, but will tolerate it if necessary and is perfectly happy to be around other folks as long as one of her family members is in the same room.

- Always has her hair in her eyes. Dare I trim those bangs????

- Weighs just around 16 lbs, still below the 5th percentile for her age – but her tiny-ness sure doesn’t seem to be slowing her down!