10

This was right after Palmer got her ears pierced while we waited for Bryir to get hers done.

There's lots to tell about Palmer's happenings in the last month.  I'll try to keep the words to a minimum; I've been looking through old posts lately and I'm realizing that I have a lot of really long posts.
Palmer turned 10 months old two days ago.  How is this happening?  Here are some of the happenings of the last month in the life of Palmer:

*Got her ears pierced.  I always said I didn't want to pierce my baby girls' ears.  I thought I would just wait until they were old enough to ask for it.  Taylor really wanted to get her ears pierced.  He slowly started wearing me down.  On top of that, a few of Palmer's little friends started getting their ears pierced and it was so dang adorable and their moms said that they were glad they had done it.  So long story short Cheyna and I decided to take Palmer and Bryir to get their ears pierced.  Palmer had been a HUGE grouch for a couple of days so I was a little nervous, but I figured we should go ahead with the plan.  She HATED getting her ears cleaned and marked.  But after the piercings were done she cried for a minute or so and then she was just fine.  She looks so dang cute and hasn't played with her earrings at all.  She gets annoyed when I clean them but gets over it as soon as I'm done.

*The next day I found out why she had been such a huge grump.  She woke up with a nasty cough.  I didn't think much of it at first cause she was acting pretty happy and she seems to get coughs pretty often.  But then Cheyna reminded me that at the playdate we'd had a few days earlier, Palmer's little friend Jag had a very similar nasty cough and he was diagnosed with RSV a few days later.  So I quickly called the clinic for an appointment.  I took Palmer in and, sure enough, she tested positive for RSV.  Her oxygen level was good and so they told me to just watch her closely at home to make sure she didn't have trouble breathing and that she didn't get dehydrated.  For the first couple of days I thought it wasn't going to get too bad for her, but by about day three she really started acting miserable.  She never had trouble breathing and she kept eating enough to stay hydrated.  She had a really bad cough and had a never-ending supply of snot; she vomited a bunch of times and had a lot of trouble sleeping.  On Sunday she got really lethargic and had a pretty good fever so I got quite worried.  My dad came over and he and Taylor gave her a blessing.  I came really close to taking her to the ER that day, but she took a sudden turn for the better that evening.  It still took her a few days to really come around, but from then on she just continued to get better.  Oh, and she got her first tooth the day after testing positive for RSV.  Poor little thing.  Once she was pretty much over the RSV we got to enjoy a couple of days of rest and happiness, before she got sick again.  It seemed to be some sort of flu or something.  She had a fever for a couple of days and vomited a few times.  She didn't seem super miserable, but she only wanted me and would cry and cry if I left her side or handed her off to anyone else.  Needless to say, we did not get very much sleep for about two weeks; we spent a lot of time cuddling in the glider chair in her room.

The pictures in this outfit were taken on the 11th.  I included this picture to show how much hair she's getting on top.  She had just taken a bath so her hair was a little wet still; it's not greasy :)  Also, check out those lashes!

I just thought this was a cute silly face

In this one you can kinda sorta almost see her teeth...well at least one of them.

She wasn't very happy at first when I put her in this basket.  Her favorite thing to do is to pull out all of her toys and throw them all over the room.  Since she emptied out the basket it seemed like the right thing to do to put her in it.

After a second she decided it wasn't so bad in the basket.

Then she even decided she kinda liked it :)

This girl loves to be outside.  We are so happy that the weather is getting nicer so we can spend time outside.  She loves sitting on the lawn and running her hands through the grass and watching the millions of neighborhood dogs and cars go by.

We went to the circus in Monticello on Palmer's 10 month birthday with all of my family that lives in Blanding.  Here she is sitting on Aunt Kristi's lap.  She was happy as could be and completely entertained for about five or ten minutes.  For the rest of the time she was climbing all over her dad and me and really didn't care about the elephants and clowns.

Family picture at the circus...with an elephant bum in the background :)

Some of Palmer's brave cousins rode an elephant at intermission.

*Palmer's second tooth came in on the 10th.  So she now has both of her bottom middle teeth.  She seems to be kind of an average teether as far as her fussiness is concerned.  I definitely figured that a tooth must be coming in because she was extra fussy for a couple of days and didn't want to eat as much, but she didn't seem as miserable as I've heard of some other babies.

*Over the last couple of months I've gotten more into making my own baby food.  At first it just seemed overwhelming to do it, so I just did a very little bit here and there.  I've now decided that it's really not very time-consuming at all.  It's a great way to not let fruits and vegetables go bad.  If we ever have anything that is getting close to having to be thrown out I'll just make it into some yummy Palmer food.  It's a nice way for her to try different things, since store-bought baby food can be limited in the flavors you can find.  For the most part she still seems to like everything that I feed her.  We've tried some interesting combinations and she eats it all up.

*I said, "for the most part" she'll eat anything I feed to her.  She has really started to develop quite the little stubborn attitude.  Sometimes mealtime can become quite the messy battle.  It's not just at mealtime that her attitude comes out.  It's hard to really explain because for the most part she's still a happy little sweetie, but I think she's really just getting more aware of everything and when she doesn't want to eat/drink/play with something she lets me know by squealing madly and batting away whatever I'm trying to give her.  She'll fling her head back and arch her back if she's not happy with her situation.  I think I'm seeing the beginnings of her tantrums.  I'm gonna be honest, I don't love it.

*She's getting really good at copying my actions.  She'll clap her hands after I do it.  She'll raise her arms after me.  She loves to cover her face and play peekaboo.  She's finally mastered the army crawl.  She's getting pretty good at scooting wherever she wants to go.  Luckily it's not the fastest mode of transportation so it hasn't made my life too difficult yet.  Mostly it's just really cute.  She's not super into her binky.  She still likes it when she lays down for a nap or at bedtime, but lots of times she'll spit it out and fall asleep without it.  She very rarely uses a binky outside of her crib.  I was always planning to take it away, except for sleeping, at a year old but she's basically done that herself already.

*Palmer girl is getting VERY clingy.  I don't think she feels stranger danger; I think she just prefers me.  Quite often she'll cry when I hand her off to someone else, but she gets over it right away and then will be just fine with others, unless she's really tired.  She hates it if I leave the room unless she's really enthralled in a toy.

Ok this did not end up being any shorter than all my other long posts.  Sorry!  I just really have a lot to say about Miss Palmercita.  I could talk about her all day long - love this girl!

This was right when Taylor got home from work the day that we got Palmer's ears pierced.  I hadn't told him we were going to do it that day.  He noticed them right away and loved them!

Sad sad sad little RSV baby.  I can't even put into words how much I hated to see her so miserable.

Joshy came to Blanding for a week or two after he finished finals.  He loves the babies and they LOVED him too.  As soon as I would walk into my mom's house he would reach for Palmer and then hold her pretty much the whole time I was there.  She was always very happy to hang out with Uncle Squashy.