9 Months

{ Tuesday, April 20, 2010 }
When we first decided to start taking these monthly pictures, I wondered whether we'd be able to take the pictures on the exact monthly anniversary of the bean's birth for 12 months without missing one. So far, we have been able to keep up with taking the pictures but, as you may have noticed, I've been posting the pictures later and later in the month.



So, even though she's almost 10 months old, here's what the bean is (was) up to at 9 months.

Let me start by saying that, although I declare each new month "the most fun," I really mean it this time. 9 months is so. much. fun. The bean is so busy crawling and climbing and laughing and playing. We are getting to see more and more of her personality and more and more of her sense of humor and its just so fun. What we have learned is that our bean is a very social person. She waves and "talks" to every person she sees and hasn't displayed even the slightest bit of stranger anxiety. She actually wouldn't let me get away with lying recently when a total stranger came up and wanted to hold her. Um, no, I'm not handing my baby over to someone I don't know, so I fibbed and said, "Oh, she's really scared of new people, I'm afraid she'll cry." Meanwhile, the bean was reaching for this woman and trying to squirm out of my arms to get to her, which was probably the first of many times she'll rat me out.

The bean has gotten better at crawling and is a little faster at it, but she's still not getting anywhere very quickly on her hands and knees. She'd much prefer to be walking and will pull up to standing and grab at our hands to help her along, only resorting to crawling as a last resort.

The bean has also apparently gotten tired of hearing the thing that I swear I must say 100 times a day--please don't put that in your mouth. She now finds some off limits item (usually a piece of fuzz off the floor) and puts it quickly into her mouth, then howls with laughter when I come running to try to dig it out of her mouth. Such a fun game for her!

Given that putting things in her mouth is such a fun game, you'd think she'd be doing better eating solid food, but not so. The bean is definitely over having someone feed her baby food and would much prefer finger food, but she's still only eating a couple bites at each meal. She's still nursing every 2-3 hours, so I think she's just not hungry for solid food but I'm sure she'll start eating more when she's ready.

What else? We hit a bit of a snag with our toilet training while we were on vacation last month. We purchased a ring to sit on top of a regular sized toilet to make it baby-sized, but the bean was scared of it and didn't want to sit on it (I can't really blame her--a toilet is so tall compared to a baby!) We just stopped our efforts during that week which meant it took a bit of time for her to get back into the swing of things. We seem to have regained the ground we lost and are adding a third toilet session to our day. I'm really talking a lot more about going to the bathroom than I ever thought I would, but I really want to document this journey and I'm very curious to see how everything works out and to look back at what we did along the way.

Moving on. At 9 months, the bean is starting to become less baby and more toddler. I definitely have mixed feelings about this. I miss our little baby who we held and stared at for hours. I'm excited to move onto the next phase and toddlers are the absolute most fun! Also, toddlers are pretty scary. I'm a bit intimidated by the baby tantrums we've seen--the refusal to have her diaper changed or clothes put on, her crawling away when we ask her to come to us. Right before she was born, I wondered how we'd ever parent a baby and now I'm wondering the same thing about a toddler. I know we'll figure it out, but its a little scary (and a lot exciting!) right now.

And finally, my favorite thing about 9 months requires a bit of explanation. I used to see other new parents holding their little babies up against their chests and I'd feel a twinge of jealousy that their babies would rest their little heads right up on their parent's chest and snuggle in. As a newborn, our bean never really liked to be held that way (she didn't really like to be held, period). But we're now getting a taste of it at 9 months. When she's tired, or sad, or just needing a hug, she snuggles right in and its the best. thing. ever. Yay for 9 months!

2 comments:

Strawberry said...

Great update! She's just so cute! And I agree that 9 months is a great age. You can really see that transition from baby to toddler about then. Whoo boy though, those tantrums just get worse as they get older. They know what they want and they don't want to be kept from it!

Sounds like she's doing fabulously though. And I wouldn't worry too much about the solid food yet. Just keep trying and hopefully it'll pick up more in time. You're at a good point to offer a great variety of things, too, so maybe with more choices, she'll be more interested hopefully. Spicing thing (like with cinammon or herbs) helped Miles in that department too.

Val said...

Another beautiful picture... but BOY it would be great to see her in person... say, like at bowling or at the bowling picnic???!! jes sayin'! :)