9 Months In... 9 Months Out

Dear William,

Nope. Nope. Nope. I am not sitting here writing your 9 MONTH LETTER! I can't believe it. You are now officially 39 weeks old. That means that you have officially been earthside for exactly as long as you were in utero. That is just mindblowing to me. I love that you are growing into such an amazing little man.

We had your official 9 month doctor's visit this morning. That means that for the first time in a few months we have an official height and weight for you. Drumroll please! You are officially 20 pounds, 3 ounces (50th percentile) and 29 inches (76th percentile). You are following the same path as your sister so far. Once you started becoming more mobile, you started slimming. You are tall and slim according to the pediatrician. Despite all that chub on your legs, you are actually fairly thin. I hope that trend keeps up for you throughout your life. We shall see. I have noticed that you are starting to thin out too so this just solidified my thoughts. I also notice that without your helmet, you appear slightly smaller. Dr. C said it is because your head is very average (50th percentile) so that makes your entire body look smaller as a whole. She said babies with bigger heads tend to look bigger than they are. Interesting. She has told us that before, but it wasn't really apparent until you wore the helmet and that made your head look larger so you looked even bigger. It still isn't uncommon though for me to have people ask how old you are and when I tell them have them tell me that I must be kidding because you are huge. Apparently you still look large to everyone else. Dr. C and I laughed for a while at your appointment about how despite your slimming, your cheeks seem to be hanging on. You might just be blessed/cursed with those super pinchable cheeks forever, my child. (I wouldn't mind.) Other than all that, your appointment was very basic today. You are all caught up on vaccines so you didn't get any today. You weren't into Dr. C trying to hold you. She called you a typical 9 month old boy. Apparently not only is the age the separation anxiety age (which we knew), but in her experience, boys typically are more clingy at this age. You are just a Momma's boy. =) Dr. C was also super happy you were still breastfed at this point. It apparently still isn't common to make it to 9 months and she was happy that we are shooting for a year like we did with Kenzie. We should get there with no issues at this point. I can't see a reason that we wouldn't make it barring a weird illness on my part or something.

You are just getting to be so big! You are officially wearing entirely 12 month or larger clothing. You even have a couple of 2t shirts that you wear periodically. They are a bit large, but they work. That shouldn't be allowed. You mostly wear 12-18 month but periodically you end up in 24 months or even those 2t's... and it works.

You eat like a horse. You seem to burn calories like Kenzie though. You never stop moving so you are constantly burning and you eat quite a lot to fuel your energy level. Lord help me when you start walking. I am going to need to start taking my own daily naps to keep up with you and your sister at the same time. It's hard enough now. You are still nursing about 5 times a day (usually one or two more) and you continue to wake at night to nurse a few times. We are attempting to wean off of that though. You also eat "three" meals a day. I say "three" because lunch is always a bit iffy. You typically eat either 3 ounces of fruit alone or oatmeal (the big people kind) and 2 ounces of fruit, or a baby yogurt for breakfast. You also pick at pancakes and eggs periodically. At lunch we try to do mostly finger foods. So, you might have peas and carrots, bananas, crackers (which is one of your new favorites) bites of cheese, cheerios... you get the idea. You really seem to like whole wheat crackers. You will chow down on those for quite some time.  At dinner we sometimes give you what we are eating if it is feasible, but if you do not have that or do not eat enough of that, then we often give you 3-5 ounces of fruits and/or veggies. We are working on moving to more and more table food and I think you are doing pretty well. You are still learning to pick up food and actually get it to your mouth but you are getting better. If I put the food in your mouth, you can eat most of it with minimal gagging or anything else crazy. Jack has resumed his shark status as we have added on more finger foods to your diet. You have also learned fairly early that dropping food to him is funny... so that doesn't help anything. If you aren't really hungry you will instead just drop all your food piece by piece to Jack to see what happens. This month we have added a whole host of new foods to your diet. You currently love peaches. You have also had broccoli, meatloaf, baked ziti, rice, eggs, pancakes, and beets along with a bunch of other stuff. It's not feasible for me to list it all at this point. The only issue we have had so far it appears is blueberries. I mixed some in with your peaches the other day and noticed later in the day that you had two, very red cheeks. I'm not 100% sure if it is related yet but I will be trying them again one more time to see if you have the same reaction or if the redness was something else. You have gotten that redness before when it is windy as your sensitive skin isn't really into wind that is too strong.

You now officially have 3 teeth. One of your top middle teeth FINALLY cut through yesterday morning. It took forever, it seemed. I think I was saying "any day now" for the last two or three weeks. The other top middle looks to be shortly behind.... but based on how long this one took, who knows? I can also see another bottom tooth coming in but it might be a bit.

As for sleep... You take about 2 naps a day. We went through a period during which you seemed to think 45 minute naps were the way to go... so you took 3.  We finally finished up your sister's swimming lessons, so we are working on getting our normal schedule back now. You typically go 2.5 to 3 hours between naps. For bed, until a week or so ago you were still waking 5 or so times a night then all of a sudden you started waking closer to 2-3. I will take it! Some nights when you wake up, you are up for a LONG time for some reason but I actually would rather do that then wake up every 2 hours all night. You go to bed between 7 and 8 at night (depending on what we have going on that evening) and you wake up between 6:30 and 8 each morning. You even slept until 9 the other day!! Wonder if you were growing because that was a crazy morning. I asked Dr. C about you waking so often at night, but she wasn't concerned so that makes me feel a bit better. I know you will sleep eventually. We are going to keep on, keeping on for now. When we officially wean around a year, I will address the waking at night if it is still going on. I was given the okay to give you some water at night if you wake up if I wish or I was told that feeding you isn't causing any issues and you will eventually learn so I can do whatever I want. We have officially disassociated nursing with bedtime. I must admit, I was really lax about it with you. I enjoy that time with you, but I know that for our family, it is best to work on disassociating it before we wean. One night I decided that we would start slow. I was planning to nurse you with the light on and then put you down. As it turns out, I ended up nursing you with the light on, reading Goodnight Moon, saying your prayers with your prayer lamb (which you seemed to think was the best part), singing your songs and then I put you in bed. You barely fussed (not even cried) for about 15 seconds and then went to sleep. Okay. So that was taken care of. I worried about it for nothing. We have been doing that for a week and since we started, your night sleep has been getting better. Now, we are ready for whenever we decide to wean. Typically, that is the nursing session that I keep the longest. Kenzie nursed before bed until 14 months so I plan to be similar with you, but it is good to know that you don't need to nurse to sleep. You haven't nursed to sleep for naps for almost 3-4 months probably but now we have nighttime sleep disassociated, as well.

You are a talking machine. Actually, I noticed that you took some time off talking early this month as your brain started working on more physical tasks but slowly you are starting up the chatting again. You still say mama and dada most often. You also blow the heck out of some raspberries. You periodically still say hi and this month you picked up ball (though I'm still unsure if you actually know what that means or if you just repeat it when you hear Kenzie say it) and bye bye (which sounds more like buh bye and cracks me up). I noticed that you have started saying "ack" whenever Jack enters the room so I think I can safely assume that you have that word down, too. I told you that Jack was a dog the other day and you started saying "do" to him. That one I'm not convinced you have meaning with yet. You might just be mimicking me. Either way, your verbal skills are so crazy already. I seriously attribute it to you listening to Kenzie and I talking to each other all day long.

You have learned to clap and wave this month. Those are two of my favorite milestones. They are just so adorable. You clap when you get excited but usually only a few times before you get distracted. You also clap sometimes when we are in story time and you see everyone else clapping when we are signing. Your wave is my absolute favorite. You flap your whole forearm up and down and say "buy bye". You don't say bye bye every time, but it is obvious you are waving and you can do it when we tell you to say bye bye without showing you, so that is pretty good. The other day we were leaving Kenzie's swimming lesson and you were waving like a fool at all the other parents and saying "buh bye" over and over again. It was so cute!

You are still a rolling master. We have decided that you are a significantly better roller than your sister ever was. Actually, I'm at the point that I think we might be retiring the changing table soon. This is even earlier than we did it with Kenzie but I realize that I typically change you on the floor because the changing table is getting pretty precarious the more mobile you become. You crack me up spinning in circles when you sit up. You can spin on a dime and you do it FAST.  You have also learned to sit up on your own from laying down. You did it for the first time (finally) in your crib about two weeks ago. I'm hoping that as you continue to master some of these skills that your sleep gets a bit better. (I will believe it when I see it though.) When you sat up for the first time the other day, I think you actually did it in your sleep and lo and behold... you woke up. There went that nap. Haha! You have been pulling up for a couple of months now and you have that skill down pretty well. You will pull yourself up on anything you can get your hands on, even it if isn't your best option. You have a bad habit of pulling up on things that you are unable to get a firm grip on once you are standing and you fall back down. That doesn't make you too happy. You have even stood alone again without any support from me or you holding on to anything for a few more seconds.  You really like to bounce when standing if I am holding your hands. I know that is a super important skill to build your standing abilities and it is so cute. If music is playing, you will sometimes dance (which you have also started doing sitting down when you hear music). You also started to cruise about a week and a half ago. If we hold both of your hands, you will also take steps on your own. Then, right about a week ago you just started crawling!! It was crazy. We initially wondered if you would skip crawling. You learned to pull up and cruise before you learned to walk. Who does that? =) Now, we aren't so sure about when you will walk because you are really seeming to enjoy crawling. I have always heard that early talkers are late walkers though and you talked EARLY. So, we shall see. Once you figured out crawling, all bets were off. You are officially into EVERYTHING! I thought Kenzie was crazy when she started crawling. You are definitely involved in everything now. Within a few days of learning to crawl you actually climbed onto Kenzie's lego table. Once you got that knee hooked in just the right spot, you were up and on top of it. We are in trouble! Haha! We just got the baby gates back from Nana and Papa's house where we were storing them and it is just in time. I am exhausted between dealing with Kenzie and chasing you around.

You had your first official playdate this month. My friend has a son just 5 days younger than you and they came over for a few hours one day so you two could play together. He is super mobile and it was funny to watch you watching him then look at me like "Nah. I'll just roll." Silly boy. You little guys are still in the watching stage so you just spent a lot of time watching him. I'm happy you had a chance to spend some time with a baby your age. You are around older children 90% of the time so it was nice to have someone small like you. We are going to try to head to his house one day soon.

In major news... your helmet came off! After 8 weeks of wear, you were entirely within normal limits so it was decided that you were ready to "graduate" from your helmet. Yay! You rocked that helmet. I must admit... I sort of miss its adorable-ness.... but I LOVE seeing your adorable head again. Within two hours of removing the helmet was when you decided to finally try to fully take on crawling. You went about 2 feet. As I mentioned before, once you seemed to figure it out, you were off! I haven't been worried (especially since crawling isn't considered a developmental skill), but it was interesting to see you all of a sudden get more of the mechanics down when the helmet came off. I know it could have been a coincidence because you have been working on figuring it out for quite some time... but I'm not 100% sure that your lack of crawling wasn't related to the helmet. I also have realized that I miss the helmet because you are not exactly the most careful person around. You have learned you can ram yourself into things but now you are relearning that you actually can't do those things without your helmet. You have hurt yourself a few times.

Remember last month when I mentioned that you were super attached to me and we were having major issues with separation anxiety? Well, it got worse at the beginning of the month. Then, it started to magically get better. It was like a switch went off and you were all of a sudden okay most of the time with other people. Now, if you are tired, you still prefer me it seems. That being said, when I walk out of a room, you are usually okay. If I put you down to cook dinner, you can entertain yourself. Part of it seems to be because you are crawling and able to do more and part of it seems to be just because. Thank goodness!

I can't believe you are already 9 months old and you have been out in the world for exactly as long as you were in my tummy. That is just mind blowing to me. I've given up trying to slow down time. It doesn't work. Instead, I hope we can continue to keep making new memories with you and I will continue to take more pictures than is probably necessary.

Happy 9 months in, 9 months out Little Man!!

XOXO,
Mommy