New Behaviors

11 months is an amazing time. It seems like every day Rhea is learning something new, trying something new and showing some new behaviors. Recently we have seen both good and bad behaviors being exhibited by our daughter. I'll start with the good/cute:

--Climbing - Rhea has figured out how to climb - in and out of her chair in her playroom, in and out of her car seat when it is sitting on the floor, up the stairs quickly...she now climbs all the way up the stairs too...no more stopping on the 3rd or 4th step!

--Sitting on furniture - Rhea now loves to sit like a big girl on the furniture. She will be playing with a toy, crawl or cruise over to the couch, put the toy on the couch and then lift up her leg to try and climb on. She is obviously still too little to actually get on the couch herself, so we help her. And to our surprise, she is happy to sit still on the couch and play with whatever toy she brought with her. By sit still I mean for a max of 3 minutes, which is an eternity to her.

--Letting us know what she wants - Rhea has started being able to express to us what she wants. If she wants a cookie, she will look in her baby bag for the cookies, pull them out and hand them to me. When I ask her if she wants one, she gets all excited and lets me know that she does.

Which leads to the not so good or cute behaviors:

--Not getting what she wants - We have seen the first signs of Rhea getting upset when we say no or she doesn't get what she wants. If she wants to go up the stairs and the gate is closed, she will try to open it, which she can't, and then will start crying. We try to stay strong and let her know that she can't do whatever she wants to do now and redirect her to something else, which usually works, unless she is really tired...then the fussiness reaches an all time high.

--Not wanting her diaper changed - I don't where this came from...really out of the blue. But suddenly, every time I try to change Rhea's diaper, she fusses. I hand her toys to play with which get tossed aside, I try having Daddy make silly faces, which Rhea ignores, anything to amuse her for the 5 seconds it takes me to change her diaper. She is now not only crying, but trying to roll over and scoot away mid diaper change, which leads to desitin everywhere and a prolonged diaper change. Is this part of her letting us know what she does and doesn't want?

--Finally, separation anxiety...it's back in full force. All weekend, if I even left the room Rhea was in or tried to go upstairs to shower, she freaked out. Leaving her with Rachelle the past 2 days while I am at work has been awful. She has been upset and fussy all day and dropping her off has been a nightmare. Yesterday I tried the quick goodbye and today was a longer drop off. Rachelle said she did better with the quick goodbye, so I guess we'll try that the rest of the week. All I know is it's hard enough to leave her and I really wish I didn't ever have to. But knowing she's upset and I can't do anything about it is absolute torture. I know it could be the result of our week-long vacation/togetherness and that it could also be her age - did I read somewhere that separation anxiety is bad around 12 months?? Whatever it is, I hope we can resolve it soon because I want her to have fun and enjoy whatever it is she's doing, even if I can't be there to share it with her.