Carissa wore her first pair of shoes last week to church. I spent most of Sacrament Meeting putting them back on her feet and trying to convince her that it’s a good idea to leave them on.

She is 11.5 months old now and can stand on her own, and sometimes she takes a few unsteady steps by herself.

She is getting more personality and playfulness. She’ll pull herself to standing on the couch, and then plop herself back down and laugh, and do it over and over again. Sometimes she’ll make a noise, and I’ll make it back, and she’ll make it back to me, and we’ll go on like this for a while.

She has her two front upper and lower teeth, and is getting two more teeth on top.

Since she gets kind of upset when I try to feed her baby cereal or food, and since I won’t let her feed herself because I’m not willing to give her a bath after every meal, I’ve been giving her more baby crackers lately. She can feed them to herself, which she likes, and they’re not too messy, which I like. Wesley will have to adjust, since I give them to her in what has previously been known as his “pretzel cup.”

Today for church I dressed her like this, in a froo-froo skirt, flower for her hair, and a bracelet on her wrist.

You can see she’s already taking off the bracelet, and the flower came off next. She ended up just in a dress, but at least she had that.

She turns one in a couple of weeks. I look at her and can’t even believe that just a year ago I was still pregnant with her. Here she is, practically a lady already.