9 months - hitting every milestone in the road!

Don King wanna be

mini piggies, the cuteness
goes to 11!

E is now 9 months old!  Everything about her is growing and growing.  Her hair cracks me up in her picture above.  It cracks me up every day.  It comes in about 7 million different lengths all of which point in different directions!  I know I will miss her crazy hair when it is long enough to lay flat.  I enjoy spiking it up or pushing it into a mow hawk when it's wet.  It's too crazy for the topknot/fountain single bow.  The bow just looks lost in a sea of unruly hair.  However, it is now long enough to do tiny pig-tails and top them each with a bow, resulting in the cutest set of mini-piggies I have ever seen.  (not that I'm bias or anything)

She has been hitting milestones like crazy, some of them are age appropriate and others are a bit advanced for her.  She's still a bit behind on her vocalizations, sometimes.  She'll babble and talk and go crazy sometimes, others you can talk and talk and talk to her and she never responds!  But she has an array of vowel sounds and several consonants as well.  including being able to say "Muma" and "Dada".  She says "Dada" more often and she doesn't associate either word with the correct person but it makes my heart leap every time she says "Mum"!  (though it's usually when she's crying)

Her motor skill milestones have kicked into high gear both gross and fine motor skills!  She has always loved her food and loves feeding herself but now she can grab her food in a pincer grasp, no more squished handfuls of broccoli.  Sadly no more sucking on her hand trying to get to the food inside, this always amused me in earlier months.  Now she can shovel food into her face as fast as she can, with both hands pincering away like little crabs.  And she eats, oh man does she eat!  She has polished off half a can of green beans plus chicken, berries and cheerios in one sitting.  She loves her solid food.  Her formula she loves as well...but only at night and only from mom or dad.  At daycare she will scarf down any and all solid foods they offer her, but given a bottle she drinks between 1-2 ounces or just flat out refuses to drink at all.  But at home with Mama or Daddy she will routinely drain 4-6 oz bottles, sometimes more.  Especially at night.  She will however drink water from her training cup.  She's liked cups forever and now she has her very own.  She still manages to pour a good bit of water down her chest, despite the no drip lid....it drips out her mouth, not out of the cup!

She can also feed herself with a spoon somewhat.  She loves being given the spoon with food on it and navigating the spoon to her mouth.  Most of the time she hits the target, though sometimes she still resorts to her younger self and flings the spoon about wildly, resulting in the contents of the spoon being strewn on the floor, the wall, E, Mamma, daddy pretty much anywhere but E's mouth.  She can even use the spoon to get food from a container with some skill.

More fine motor skills she's working on are playing with her toys.  She LOVES to bang her toys together.  Blocks, balls, dolls, her toothbrush, the magazine she stole off the counter....it all gets banged together and the louder and crazier the resulting sound the more she loves it.  She will dig through her toy bin and pull out toys just to bang them together.  She will pull every block out of the container so she can then bang the blocks on the container.  She's my little Bam-Bam.  In true E style she crushed yet another milestone on her 9 month birthday. Not only can she bang objects together, but she can Clap!  Oh how proud she is of herself when she claps.

gymnast in training

Month 9 also saw E starting her Little Gym classes....and oh how she LOVES little gym.  Most of the other kids there have some fussy times or fussy days but E is just happy, happy, happy there.  She loves being able to crawl everywhere and practice walking.  She loves doing flips with mama and hanging from the bars or walking on the balance beam (with mom's help).  She loves it all and it has helped with her gross motor skills.  E can now cruise fairly confidently.  She can squat down and stand back up while holding onto something.  She can walk and kind of run while holding onto mama.  She can even stand unassisted for about a second or two.  She can play with a ball, she's pretty great at catching it (you know, for a 9 month old) and can roll it around, sometimes she even gets it to roll to whoever she's playing catch with...though she has no aim whatsoever, so this is purely accidental.

climb baby climb!

And....she can hold onto the rock wall.  This is huge.  Daddy was first interested in Mommy because they both liked to rock climb, so the fact that E has displayed the basics for climbing....huge.

Sometimes all these new skills result in her getting into situations she can't get out of.  Like the one pictured here....E crawled under her exersaucer, and then stood up to try to play with the toys.  Oh the crying and frustration.  She couldn't figure out that all she had to do was sit down to get out.  Eventually (after a few pictures and a quick video) mama helped her get free.

no hat!

She is still throwing temper tantrums, and they are getting worse.  When something happens that she doesn't like, she scrunches her face up, sends her body rigid and wails.  Mama and Daddy don't like it, but just calmly tell her "no, ma'am" and "that is not they way we ask for things in this house"  it seems funny to do these with a 9 month old, but I'm not going to give in because I'm a firm believer that what we do now is setting the standard for the terrible 2s.    Things that routinely cause a tantrum: not letting her crawl into the kitchen, changing clothes, diaper changes, going into the car seat, taking away any object that she's not supposed to have (paper, dead bugs, mama's keys), and not letting her have the tablet or computer if you are working on them.  She is SO obsessed with technology....oh, and putting a hat on her sometimes causes massive melt down.

She has also finally cut her top two teeth.  It took months but they are finally through her gums.  We have started including brushing her teeth in the bedtime routine.  She doesn't like it but is more accepting of it when we let her hold the tooth brush and we guide her hand.  She has also attempted to brush Daddy's teeth once or twice with her tooth brush.   It's very cute.

All these major milestones and teeth have come at a price.  E doesn't like to sleep anymore.  She's not slept through the night more than once or twice her entire life but recently E has been getting up every 1.5 to 2 hours at night.  And fussing or coughing while sleeping.  She'll eat like a champion when she gets up the firs time.  Then she'll just fuss and want to be held and rocked.  Oh the sleep deprivation.  E has an uncanny knack for knowing right when mommy's head hits the pillow and mommy's eyes close.  The moment that happens, she cries.  To make sure that Daddy can function mommy takes the night shift during the work week and Daddy takes it on the weekends.  Oh the sleep deprivation. While on shift we sleep in the guest bedroom next to E's room so that the baby monitor doesn't wake the other person.  We used to sleep in her room and do away with the monitor but if she sees you when she wakes up there is NO chance she will go back to bed, so we sleep next door.  Very tired parents.  Hopefully now that her top teeth have cut through the sleeping will get better.  We've been letting her cry a little bit during the night, to hopefully teach her to self sooth.  One of the biggest culprits that cause her to wake up is when she loses her pacifier.  So now daddy and mommy give E a few minutes to find her paci herself or sooth herself in some other manner.  Currently we are up to 2 minutes.  At 2 am, with a crying baby next door, 2 minutes seems like an eternity.  But it's getting to the point that more often than not she will calm herself and go back to sleep within the 2 minutes.

Despite the lack of sleep I have really loved this month.  E is becoming such a little person.  She interacts more, she smiles, she laughs, she plays games.  She just seems to be getting more and more awesome as time goes by.  I can't wait to see what month 10 brings (hopefully it will bring more sleep along!)  Keep growing super-girl!