Kaelia - 11 Months

Kaelia is now 11 months and has jumped up quite a bit in her measurements. She weighs 20.3 lbs., is 33.1 inches tall, and has a head circumference of 17.5 inches. This puts her in the 50th percentile for her weight and head measurements and the 95th percentile for her height.

Developmentally, Kaelia has made some physical and mental leaps as well. She has been perfecting her walking and attempts to walk at every chance she can get. She has made it about halfway across a room so far before either falling or choosing to crawl the rest of the way. Each time she takes a step, though, she is so proud of herself. And when she does crawl around the house, it is usually a bear crawl where her legs are straight so that her knees do not touch the ground. This type of crawl is just another indicator that she would rather walk than crawl.

This month has been quite the verbose month too. Kaelia loves to talk and has picked up more words. She will repeat words that we say such as “cat,” “cow,” and “cool,” and she definitely knows the word “dog.” Whenever we see a dog at the playground, she shouts out “dog” followed by “ooooh” (that’s what she says when she gets really excited about something). And Kaelia loves to “read” books with dogs in them. She will often sit alone and flip through her books for a little independent time. But we whenever she comes across a dog in her books, she slaps the page and says “daw” for “dog.”

Another milestone that Kaelia has recently reached is pointing and waving. While we read books to her, she likes to point at items on each page for us to say out loud to her. And when we ask her where something is on the page (like the dog), she will point to it. One day we were reading a book together that had a dog in it, and she first pointed to the dog on the page. Then she looked up at the bookshelf and pointed to another book with a dog on the cover and said “daw.” I really can’t reiterate enough how much our little pumpkin loves dogs! Kaelia also waves any time we say “bye bye” now. She has been waving for several months, but this is the first time it has occurred in context; she used to just wave for fun, but now she waves to say good-bye. Kaelia was playing with my wallet one day and found a picture of Justin in it. She pointed to him and said “da.” Then when I put the wallet a way, I saw “bye bye daddy,” and she waved good-bye to the picture.

Kaelia is such a sweetheart, and it is so fun to see her personality coming out more and more. She loves to be around her family, play outside in the sand box, climb up anything she can, swing and go down the slide at the playground, look at birds (and of course dogs!), wrestle, and give kisses.

Here is a cute little video we took of Kaelia this past month where she tries to put an object on her head.