Millie at 11 months already!

Millie turned 11 months old yesterday! She weighs 18 lbs, 6.2 oz and is about 29" long, but I'm not certain. With each month that passes I can see how much she's learned and grown. Her personality has changed a lot, too. She laughs at the funny faces we make, kisses any dog she sees in her books, and hugs and loves on her mom and dad (my favorite!). She gets frustrated easily especially when she can't get somewhere she wants to be, like into Bella's dog toys or in the tupperware cabinet or to the bottom of her toy box. When she's hungry, tired, or scared (like when I drop her off at the church nursery), everyone knows it. She's calm otherwise.
This month Millie has had even more changes in her behavior and abilities:
- One of the biggest things this month (to our budget) is that she is no longer eating "baby" (or pureed) foods. She wants big food now. The other day at Moe's we ordered her a kids quesadilla meal! I can't believe we're actually paying for her food at a restaurant now! But neither Matt nor I could share our big burritos so we had to get her something. I hope its not the beginning of lots more kids meals to come. I am still making her apple/pear sauce but that's the only thing she'll eat from the spoon. As for the main course, she will only eat what she can self-feed.
-She has one tooth and will gnaw until no end with her gums. You can see the others but they haven't come through yet.
-She has finally started liking chunks of banana. She never seemed to like them before, and each week I thought, here we go making banana bread again because some of the bananas would go bad.
-She enjoys playing with baby dolls and talks to/laughs at them. Her imagination has ignited.
- As you already know, she is crawling and cruising around the furniture.
-She wants to explore and get into everything. This week I've started training her for what Babywise calls "blanket time." Blanket time should eventually allow me to put her on a blanket with a basket of toys for a set amount of time and keep her on that blanket and out of danger while I get things done. It's proven, so I'm trying it. So far so good.
- She will walk while only holding one hand, but prefers to hold both hands so she can go fast.
- She can stand for about 5 seconds without support. She stood for the longest amount of time last weekend when we were at the park. She stood on the blanket which you would think is the most bumpy/fluffy ground for her to stabilize herself, but she did it.
- She likes to talk on the phone with anybody, and then after we hang up she likes to look at photos of herself in my phone. I say "where's the baby?" and she'll point or kiss herself.
-She likes to help with the laundry, aka take everything out of the hamper after I've folded it. Then proceeds to play with the zippers, velcro, buttons, etc.
-She loves for us to read to her and her favorite book recently is "Love You Forever." We read her that and Animal Kisses just before bedtime.
-Speaking of bedtime, as of yesterday I have stopped nursing her to sleep at bedtime. Last night, she went right down without a peep.
-So this is the beginning of weaning her... which I am so excited about! I love our time together. I love the closeness. I love our connection. But I also love my husband! I love and miss our date nights. We haven't been able to enjoy a dinner at a reasonable hour without Millie. Or leave her with a friend or family member for an extended amount of time. I am so looking forward to the 5 out-of-town weddings we plan to attend this year too. My goal is to wean her by her first birthday. If it takes longer, I'm ok with that too.
I am really excited about all of you getting to know Millie better. I feel like I've hogged her this year, which I guess is to be expected, but now you can feed her too! hehe.