So Many New Things!

Rachel is 10 months old now, and she seems to be picking up on new actions and sounds faster than we can note them. On Easter weekend, she started to cluck her tongue off the roof of her mouth. I'm not sure where that came from. Shortly after that, she started to make a little snorting noise as she wrinkled her nose. She's doing a lot of the nose-wrinkling still, and she seems to be finding herself quite amusing lately :)

Rachel is also teasing us a lot by pulling her hands away from everything and standing independently for a few seconds at a time, but only when she doesn't know she's doing it. She still thinks she needs to hold onto something and doesn't realize how steadily she's able to stand up. She continues to practice walking by cruising around like crazy and can really move with her little push-walker now.

This weekend, she started to clap, out of the blue. That was a first. She also likes to share things, or at least pretend she's going to share them (such as a Cheerio) and then quickly take her hand back and shove it in her mouth. She enjoys making us laugh and is pretty aware of when she's doing something silly.

She's doing quite a lot of pointing, too, and I think she's eager to know what everything is called. And she thinks it's a fun game to hold her little finger out and have someone else touch it, "E.T."-style.

It's so fun to watch her develop little games and new awareness. Every week she becomes more of a little independent person. It's bittersweet, because I know that the time will continue to pass quickly and I'll miss things about each stage once it's over. But it's also exciting to get to know Rachel as she grows and for her to be able to communicate with us more.