This is baby Hayley at 10 months. :)
I’m trying to be more diligent about these snapshot posts because the moments just hang around for a bit and leave so quickly. In my day to day, all these minutes are floating by like little clouds of smoke and I try to catch each one and hold them in my hands a bit longer but I can’t catch them all and most of them get blown away like leaves in the wind and years later, all that’s left will be faded memories of these babies I used to have. When these kids are all grown up, I’m gonna need more than a few faded memories, is what I’m saying.
10 month old baby Hayley is like fluffy cotton candy sprinkled with popping candy bits. She’s mostly sweet and gentle and all delightful babyness. And she’s got the loveliest baby dimples, which are like the finishing touches on that adorable face. I used to be just ok with dimples but now, I can definitely see the appeal.
Most of the time, her idea of conflict resolution is to be sweet and docile, which is strangely effective in a disarming sort of way. All the other kids are like “ok ok whatever you like baby Hayley, kor kor and jie jie will give you.”
Unless there are beverages involved, then all bets are off. When she’s in the presence of any sort of drinks, she turns into an angry flailing monster who will destroy everything standing in her way. It doesn’t matter what the drinks are either – milo, milk tea, juice, yakult, soursop with sour plum, soya bean milk – she wants in on all of it.
She will have it in a mug
She will have it on a rug
She will have it on a chair
She will have it anywhere.
Nothing makes her quite as happy as when she’s sipping on a delicious beverage treat.
She still sleeps like an infant at night, in that she naps for 2-3 hours a stretch, then wakes up and demands to be babied back to sleep. During the day, she doesn’t sleep at all. She’ll take a 30 minute snooze at noon, then stays awake for the rest of the day till bedtime at 8pm. What kind of baby does this? The kind that delights in the misery of her momma, I suppose.
She’s also got the most bizarre sleep quirks. Instead of holding a blanket or soft toy like normal babies, she needs to hold her toes in a full stretch like one of those baby Chinese acrobats while feeding, which is a most ridiculous move because once she drifts off, she will involuntarily let go of her foot, causing her to twitch violently and wake up. I keep telling her that this is not sustainable and very poorly thought through but does she listen? No.
Developmentally, she’s more of a freestyler. At this age, all the other kids were proficient crawlers and they could pull themselves up to a standing position. But not baby Hayley because she does not care for such milestones. She can sit up and crawl very slowly with tremendous effort (and grunting), but as for standing, she refuses to even try. Zero effort. She just enjoys lying down and rolling around, and I totally get it. If I could, I’d spend all my time lying around too. All this standing and walking is so much effort and not even that enjoyable.
The best part about 10 months is that this is gradually getting easier. In a year or so, I’ll be done with this demanding newborn stage forever and I’m not sure if I’m ready for that. While I’m looking forward to sleeping a full night the way humans are intended to, I’m really, really going to miss this chubby baby face.
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