Emma's 9 months old!

This little girl is 9 months old today!

My darling Emma Sophia

Firsts:
-Self feeding with the mesh feeder
-Drinks from her sippy cup (holds it up high to let the water pour down!)
-Hands and knees crawling
-Standing propped up against something
-New sounds (ba ba ba, gah gah gah, and the ah-ah-ah from when she pats her hand on her mouth)
-Waving bye bye
-Clapping her hands
-Crawling through the play tunnel

Growth and development:
Crawling very fast, but still mostly army crawl.  She has started to take a few "steps" in an upright hands and knees crawl as of the past few days, but usually she realizes it'll be quicker to get down and do it army style.  She's also able to stand upright and lean/hold onto something.  She often freezes and holds on for dear life when I prop her up like this though.

Seeing her like this reminds me how tiny she still is, yet she looks so big being able to do it!

She definitely knows her name and will look my way when I call it.  She also knows what I mean when I say 'bye bye', because she just started waving her hand when I say 'bye bye'.  In addition to understanding what we say, she's starting to "say" more things herself too.  She's learned that she can say "ahhhh" while I'm bouncing her or when I pat my hand on her mouth and it will make an "ah-ah-ah" sound, and she does it to herself a lot with her own hand.   Beyond that, she says "boo" after I say it, and lots of "ba ba ba" and "gah gah gah".  Sometimes she gets the "m" sound out, but not too much yet.

She still wears size 3 pampers diapers, but is just now moving out of size 9 month clothes and into 12 month sizes.  At her 9-month check up yesterday she weighed in much lower than both John and I thought she'd be.  She was just about 18 lbs at 6 months, so I had bet she'd be around 22 lbs and John wagered around 25 lbs!  However, she weighed in at just 19 lbs 3 oz (69%)  today.  She's really slowed down her growth, which maybe explains how she was able to keep wearing her size 9 month clothes up until she was almost 9 months old 9 (previous sizes she outgrew 1-2 months before she was the age of the size). She was 27 inches long (27%) and her head circumference was 17.4 inches (61%).

Watching closely while Daddy and Evan put together a puzzle

Her hairs getting long enough that it gets in her eyes, but I can't bear to cut it yet so I'm trying to use hair clips and head bands to keep it out of her face.  However, she pulls those out so quickly (and John calls the headbands chokers, because they often just sit around her neck after she pulls it down).  Also, it's gotten long enough that it is in the stand up phase…so she looks a bit electrified in a lot of photos lately. :)

Trying to keep her hair out of her eyes…but these hair accessories don't stay in long!

Meal time:
Emma still drinks 5 oz of breastmilk per bottles (roughly every 3-4 hours).  And now she's easily eating a whole 4 oz jar of baby food per meal.  She uses her "more" sign pretty energetically when I'm close to half way through the jar (which is what we used to give her per meal until recently).  New foods this past month are: corn, pumpkin, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, and spinach.  She usually has baby oatmeal mixed with fruit puree or prune juice for breakfast, and then a fruit or veggie for lunch and then a veggie and grain or veggie and meat mix for dinner.

Sleep time:
Emma sleeps very well.  She takes two naps per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  One is typically 1-1.5 hours long, but the other can be up to 2 hours, depending on how long the earlier one was.  She goes down for naps so well.

At bedtime, which is still around 8pm for her, she goes to sleep pretty good for us too.  Sometimes she falls asleep while nursing, but even on nights when she is still awake, she may fuss for a few minutes but she usually goes to sleep on her own.  She sleeps until sometime between 3-5am and then I nurse her and she goes back to sleep until 7-8am.  However, the last few nights we've started giving her ibuprofen at bedtime again because she woke us up at midnight a few nights ago and stayed up until nearly 2am…we think she must be working on those teeth again (however still none have popped through).  The good thing was that last night she slept all the way through the night (from 8pm to 6am!) so maybe the ibuprofen helped!

Play time with her puzzle, stacking rings, and teething beads

Play time:
Emma will sit and play with her toys for awhile on her own, but she also loves to explore the house too.  If we don't cordon off the living room, she loves to come army crawling into the kitchen and other rooms of the main floor to check out things that are not her toys.    In writing this just now I realized we haven't put her in her jumperoo too much lately.  Probably because she really prefers to be able to be mobile and move around.  If I do put her in it, it's because I need to leave her alone for a minute to do something and I don't want her getting into trouble.  However, most times she doesn't like it anymore.  It seems like the months in which she could use the jumperoo have just flown by…seriously I feel like she was just big enough to start to use it yesterday!

This girl loves to explore!

She loves the new finger puppet book I got her ("5 little monkeys"…she photo of her with the hair bow above where she's playing with it), and also she likes Babies on the Bus, Peek a who, Pat the Bunny, Touch and Feel Kangaroo, and Where is Baby's Belly Button, to name a few.  The interactive (i.e. touch and feel, lift the flap, finger puppet) books are definitely her favorites, but if they are colorful (i.e. Babies on the bus is very brightly illustrated) she also likes them. She also loves the songs that Violet plays…as soon as we play a song she smiles so big.  I like singing along with them to her, especially the Wheels on the Bus and Patty Cake.

She is a brave, content, and easy going girl.  At the pace she's growing (and speed she's crawling), she is definitely going to be a handful to keep track of.  At least we have Evan to help us…he sure loves to hold her and play with her too!