This past month has probably the best month in terms of Athena’s development and milestones. It helps that Jennie has been on Summer break and Im taking 3 weeks off this summer to spend with Athena.

In the 9 month blog we wrote about Athena starting to crawl and stand. Since then we have seen her progress day after day in her ability to crawl faster, stand longer, and cruise along furniture, walls, and kitchen cabinets. She took us by complete surprise when we caught her climbing the stairs to the 2nd floor. With our supervision she has made the trek up the stairs a few times now. Thats the easy part, we’ll talk about going down stairs in a future blog.  Were happy with the progress she has made in terms of mobility, even if it means we are constantly chasing her around the house and tending to her every desire. When she’s on the floor she begs to be picked up and as soon as we pick her up she wiggles her way out of our arms so she can be on the floor. She darts across the floor on her hands and knees quickly and with confidence. If she crawling and encounters an obstacle in front of her like a book or toy, she seamlessly grabs it with one hand and flings it across the floor aggressively, almost comically and continues trotting across the floor.

This warm summer month also marked some cool firsts for Athena including her first 4th of July parade,  her first Otter Pop, and her first time in the pool. She is eating much more table food now and is starting to show her dislike of baby food. We have avoided giving her table food that is very savory or too sweet knowing that it would spoil her baby food appetite but its just hard to explain to her why she sees and smells us eating the good stuff and wont give her any. Some of her favorite foods include Tomato, Bananas, Blue Berries, Chicken, and Mangos.

 

One of the most rewarding achievements of this past month is our ability to communicate better with Athena. In addition to Mama, Dada and Bravo, She loves her ‘bawa’ (agua), her ‘dede’ (leche) and loves waving ‘buh’ (bye) at people. Athena also understands what ‘no’ means when she is doing something she shouldn’t. Theres some miscommunication however because when she is crawling or cruising to something dangerous or somewhere she doesn’t belong and we tell her “Atnena, No!” she seems to think we are telling her to hurry up because she goes into hyper mode trying to get to where she wants faster, before we catch her!

Its crazy to think that in just two months Athena will be turning 1. At 26.5 lbs and 30 inches long its remarkable how much she has grown in the past 10 months.