Florence’s 11 month baby update
Once again, I’ve been terrible, but I’m sure you can imagine life with a baby, planning a wedding, selling our flat and buying a bigger place, and being back at work, is a little bit hectic. However, Florence has changed such an unbelievable amount since my last update so I really wanted to make sure that I get another update in before she hits the scary age of one.
The last update was when Florence was only 7 months old, so 4 months ago now, so it’s not surprising that she has changed and developed so much. Florence is a proper little person and not so much my tiny newborn baby anymore!
DEVELOPMENT
I honestly don’t know where to start here as her development has progressed leaps and bounds, and month 10 was an absolutely huge one for Florence. At the very start of month 10 Florence finally got over her fear of being on her tummy and went from bum-shuffling to crawling. Within a week, her confidence increased so much as she was practicing, and her crawling quickly became super speedy getting everywhere and anywhere. One of her favourite things (until we moved it) was crawling over to her changing table where we had an old triple candle used as a pen pot and Florence emptied it throwing the pens all over the floor, even as we cleared them back up she carried on emptying it again.
The other thing she’s amazing at doing since my last update is pulling herself up. Florence pulls herself up on everything and anything, with her three favourite things to do this on being the TV stand, us and her cot. Sometimes we’ll wake up to see her glow in the dark dummy rise up as she pulls herself up to standing, which whilst amazing, if it’s 5am in the morning it’s not quite what you want to see lol!
Florence is also slowly building her confidence at cruising, walking across the TV stand and moving from her large wooden activity cube to one of us or whatever is near her. Florence also moves the little beads on the bead rollercoaster on her cube and stands playing with them, which is just amazing to watch.
Her hand usage ability has definitely expanded over the last few months, with her not only picking and passing toys, she bangs them together, constantly has toys in both hands rather than dropping one when she picks up one with the other hand, puts toys inside of things before taking them out again, and is starting to try and get the different shapes into her shape sorter and build towers. Florence also knocks over her towers we build and presses the hand pusher on her Bright Starts press and glow toy.
She has outgrown her jumperoo after being obsessed with it in my last post, so much so it’s now at my mums patiently waiting for another baby to try it. Florence also claps all the time, and even points at things too. I could go on, but these are definitely some of the key developments since my last update.
COMMUNICATION
Florence’s communication is another area which has once again come on leaps and bounds; just before she was 8 months old Florence learned to say mama in the girliest little voice. The first time she said it was actually when I popped in card factory leaving her with her daddy, and she went mama as I walked away.
She never said dada which I always found strange until one day she started saying Daddy, which probably explains why she never said dada as she was always trying to say Daddy instead. Florence can also say egg (?), doggy in context, yeah yeah yeah, and iwantmymummy (all in word). It’s amazing hearing her little voice develop.
Her understanding has dramatically improved over the last few months too. If you say “clap, clap, clap” Florence starts clapping. She also points at things, and will crawl over excitedly to us and point when she gets there with a big grin of happiness, waiting to be picked up.
Florence also understands the word “no”, which while great, also means we get the response of her bottom lip dropping and instant tears as she does not like the word no. This does mean she has learned that wires are not for playing, eating or whatever else with though lol.
Florence also responds to conversations with baby babble, and stops as if she is waiting for you to respond, before carrying on chatting again. Her giggle is still the best thing in the world to hear, I could literally listen to her laughing all day.
WEANING
Oh my gosh, weaning was something we were still very much new too. Florence was refusing to be fed off a spoon and we’d moved over to more of a baby-led weaning approach. A lot has changed since then.
I would say we’re now doing a mix of baby-led weaning and spoon-fed. I’m not quite sure when we had the magic day where Florence accepted a spoon again but she did eventually just for porridge, and from then on she’s had porridge every day for breakfast. Florence will now eat most things off of a spoon, or by herself too.
Florence absolutely loves food, and might as well be eating for Britain. She loves pinwheels, peas, porridge, anything pasta based, frittatas, a jam sandwich, yogurt, grapes, blueberries and lots, lots more. She’s up to 3 meals a day and 2 snacks.
We do still get days where she refuses food, but we’re definitely in a very positive stage of weaning. I just wish I had more time to be more inventive for her.
FEEDING
Alongside her food, Florence is still breastfed. Her feeds dropped dramatically nearly 3 months ago now with her only having a morning feed and evening feed. She was feeding throughout the night, but we were finding if she fed in the night she was not interested in her morning feed so these have now been fully dropped. Her day feeds have also been dropped.
We have also introduced formula for her bedtime bottle as the amount of milk I was expressing just wasn’t enough for Luke’s feed which was incredibly stressful for me. However, we’ve started introducing cows milk mixed with this bottle and plan to fully move over for this bottle once Florence has hit the year mark.
I don’t plan on stopping breastfeeding. We both love and cherish that morning feed, so until Florence decides to drop it I’m hoping the feeding continues for a little while.
TEETHING
Teething, I’m going to keep this one short as this one still frustrates me and Florence’s pain threshold for teething is as bad as my pain threshold, so zero pain threshold lol. She does now have her two bottom teeth, and four bulging top teeth that she’s been trying to cut for ages, but currently they still have not cut.
SLEEPING AND NAPPING
Last time I wrote about sleeping, I was writing about how many times we were up in the night, and how I felt it wasn’t going to end. This continued for another 3 months but thankfully since around 10 months Florence’s sleep has generally been amazing.
After over 6 months Florence has finally started sleeping through again. It started with the odd night or two each week, but we are now back to sleeping through most nights, something I am incredibly thankful for.
Nap-wise, we are down to two naps most of the time, and if we’re at home Florence is pretty amazing at them. Her morning nap has been her guaranteed nap for a while and is usually between 2 and 3 hours after waking. Florence then has another nap around 3-4 hours later, unless we’re out when it tends to be closer to 5 hours later.
The one thing I will say though is her napping is absolutely horrendous at nursery, they don’t seem to understand that Florence needs her two naps and leave her until she is overtired, which often leaves us with a grumpy Florence on pick-up unfortunately, but aside from nursery days we really can’t complain about her sleep anymore.
BABY CLASSES
I am now back at work so unfortunately, we’ve had to drop our favourite Jiggy Wrigglers class, but Florence is now doing swimming with her Daddy on a Wednesday and I tend to take her to rhyme time most Thursdays at the library. We are also hoping to re-start baby sensory starting the toddler sense version in January next year, which I’m super excited for as I really do miss taking Florence to baby classes.
NURSERY
Unfortunately, I had to go back to work after 9 months, I was totally not ready, but that’s for another post. Florence has therefore now started nursery two days a week (the other days she’s off with either myself or Luke). Florence goes for a full day both days, and has settled in well if we ignore the whole napping thing.
I still wish we had an option of a childminder, but Florence does seem to be enjoying herself. She has done some painting since starting, lots of playing with leaves and sand, nursery rhymes, reading, playing with their small soft play blocks in-house and lots of exploring their toys.
And that’s the end of this update. Florence really is a thriving, happy little girl who is changing and developing so much. How is she going to be one so soon? I just can’t believe it, but watching her change, grow and develop over the last year has been such an amazing, beautiful experience.
