Living With A Nine Month Old

My baby girl is nine months old now. I know I've said this with every age so far, but this really is a good one. First of all, she's mobile. She crawls not just to get to the next toy that's a few feet away, but she crawls from one room to the next in search of adventures to be had. I love seeing that look of adventure and curiosity in my little girl's eyes. Gone are the days of being able to leave her for a moment contentedly playing with her toys. She has places to go!

I'm sure one day very soon her pulling all the books off the shelf won't be so cute, but for now it's adorable!

At the same time that Claire has become an expert crawler, she has also discovered the exciting new world of standing by herself. She loves to pull up on anything she can. Some favorites are my office chair, the couch, her jumper, and her personal favorite, the ottoman. The piping is just the right size for her little fingers to grip and pull herself up. Best of all, once she's up she has a great view of the TV which she finds mesmerizing. If music is on the TV she might also gift us with a little bouncing dance as she jams along to the beat. As you can see from the picture above, footed PJ's have become a bit of a problem because nine month outfits often lack grippers on the feet. She has started spending a lot more time in pants as a result.

 

This is Claire's "Don't bother me, my show is on" face.

Claire loves a lot of different TV shows (anything with real people), but her favorite is Yo Gabba Gabba. She was pretty interested in the Fresh Beats Band as well, but YGG is the only one she likes to watch regularly. An episode of that is a life saver when I need a few uninterrupted minutes to get dressed or pack her diaper bag. I do feel guilty when I see her doing the pose in the picture above. I feel like the TV is being beamed directly into her brain, but hopefully it's telling her not to bite her friends and not that she should burn things.

 

Claire is also still happy to play and explore by herself, but she doesn't like to do it in her pen anymore. She usually only lasts ten minutes in there before she gets upset and wants to be out in the main part of the living room with us. She doesn't necessarily want us to be playing with her, she just wants to be in the thick of it all with us and her trusty steed Prince Dog.

 



 

 

 

When it comes to talking, Claire has exploded with new sounds in the last week. Obviously she doesn't know what she's saying yet, but we had our first DaDa. She has done MaMa for quite a while, but since she got DaDa now we're also hearing lots of B's and P's as well. Even if it's just baby babble at this point, it's pretty awesome to hear your kid calling you by name. She's getting really chatty as she expands her consonant vocabulary.

 

 

 

One thing Claire is definitely lagging behind on is teeth. She is nine months old and there isn't a single tooth in her adorable gummy smile. Normally by this time a baby would have at least one, but I get the feeling she's going to wait until she passes the year mark. Personally, I love a gummy smile, but it would be nice to start giving her real food to snack on instead of all those puffy treats that dissolve in her mouth.

 

On the topic of food, Claire is still going strong on her homemade purees. Her current food are: carrot, green beans, yams, butternut squash, oatmeal, banana, plums, pear, peaches, mango and her favorite for now pineapple guava. Thank God she loves at least one of the fruits growing in our yard because she HATES apple. I think it has to do with her supper sensitive gag reflex. Even the smallest lump and she throws up, and apple is really hard to get 100% lump free. She is also rebelling against orange veggies this week which used to be all her favorites. Babies are weird.

 

We've been letting her put herself to sleep for her naps. Some days are better than others.

Finally, on the all important topic of sleep, her sttn is about 50/50, and if she does wake up its for one early morning nursing and then straight to sleep. I can certainly live with that. I honestly don't really notice much of a difference between nights when I do get up and nights that I don't except that the ladies are pretty sore in the morning. She currently goes to bed and 9:00 and wakes up at 8:30, and her naps have gotten longer during the day. I can generally count on two two hour naps, one in the morning and one in the early evening/late afternoon. This is a schedule that lets momma get stuff done.