The last month has been such a joy watching Piper grow beyond her months. I watch her with complete disbelief in what she is able to do and I try to mentally prepare myself for what I speculate is going to be a relatively stressful ride through toddlerdom and teenagehood with this brave, invincible, social, happy, stubborn little human being.

When other people hang out with Piper we almost always hear two things:

Wow, she never stops moving!

and

I’ve never seen a baby smile so much.

Both comments are always taken mostly well, but it’s not until you spend time with this gal on a daily basis for ten months that you really start to understand her courage. She literally tried to crawl off the changing table. I let go of her and right as she was about to go over I caught her legs. When she first started walking, she just kept trying to walk everywhere even though she was completely falling all over the place. It was like the phrase “no pain, no gain” was somehow pre-programmed into her cute little head. 

I can also see her learning very quickly how to get what she wants from her very independent, ruling big sister. She’s scrappy and I keep warning Ellie that she better be nice to her because one day Piper is going to be big enough to take things back and push back. She doesn’t listen, just like I never listened. And then my brother actually did get bigger than me, but I lucked out because he was nice enough not to beat up on me. 

Piper has two teeth and she’s eating pretty much everything we are, but we just blend it up. Here is her ten month pic, which we took before dinner so as to avoid particles of cauliflower and pork showing up in places they really should never be.