nine months of gwenna

My Sweet Little Gwenna (that’s your newest nickname) Love,

Last week, we turned the corner on your 9 month birthday. I have got to say. This one hit me hard. This is your last single digit month. Three quarters of your first year is behind us. It’s a slippery, downward slope to one from here on out. It tears me up because you’re growing too fast, yet I’m always looking forward to the next thing and anxiously waiting for what’s ahead.

Although we haven’t had your 9 month check yet, our home scale tells me you’re about 17 lbs 12 oz. (Edited to add: At 9 months and 2 weeks you weighed 17lb 4oz, 27.5 inches long and a head circumference of 17.71inches). You wear 9 and 12 month clothes. Size 4 diapers. Medium cloth diaper covers. You’re a dainty little peanut. Here’s how you’ve looked this month…

I think ‘beautiful’ pretty well sums you up.

This age, oh this age! It’s the most fun yet. You’ve been such a little ham this month. Although, the month didn’t start so great as we spent the first few days tackling the stomach flu. Both you and I had it. And then Daddy got it a day later. It was so sad and pathetic to see you that way. Broke my mama heart. Thankfully, you recovered and were back to your normal self without missing a beat.

Here are some of the highlights of what you’ve been up to this month. You’ve taken off with baby sign. You sign more (mostly only for carbs), eat (usually accompanied by a lot of lip smacking), all done, milk, cup, and puppy. Now we’ll start working on please and thank you. You also love to wave, point your finger and clap your hands, although your coordination is not quite there and you often just squeeze your hands together. The other day you were having a wild dance party with your dad and sissy and you were just kicking your legs and going nuts waving your arms and squeezing the palms of your hands together. Speaking of dancing, that’s your favourite thing to do these days. As soon as you hear anything that even remotely resembles music you start dancing. You also love to shake. Any time there is something in your hand and I tell you to shake shake you go crazy shaking it around.

Watching you say “hi” is the cutest thing ever. Any time you have a toy phone, or really anything rectangular in your hand, you hold it up to the side of your head and say “Haaaa Haaa”. After you started doing that, any time I tried to get you to “say hi” and wave when your hands are empty, you would do the same thing, with an empty hand …. hold it against your ear and say “Haaa haaa”. Recently, you’ve started to replace this with a typical wave, though. Not nearly as cute, although still adorable.

So I guess that means that “Hi” is one of your first words. Along with Dada and Mama. More and more, I am starting to think that you’re associating those sounds with us. Although, I think Mama is more an indication that you want milk right now than an actual name for me. I guess that makes sense. Me = milk.

Speaking of milk, you typically nurse 7-8 times a day and eat 3 solids meals, as well as snacks. The snacks probably aren’t necessary but I have learned better than to try to eat or feed your sister with you around without giving you something. You will have no part in that. You are still doing very well with baby led weaning although you went through a phase of refusing fruit. The only way I could trick it into you was with a pouch or by chopping small chunks into your main course food. Some of the best were pear chunks in beef stew and plum chunks in sausage pasta. Whatever works. You seem to be back to loving fruit, though, which is wonderful. Your digestive system is still up and down but since you started taking a daily probiotic things have leveled out quite a bit and you seem to be feeling better.

You nap twice a day (usually around 8:30/9 am for 1-2 hours and 1/1:30pm for 1-2 hours) with the ever so occasional third nap if you’re in the ergo or we’re in the car. And only on days when your naps aren’t great. Which is often, unfortunately. You go down around 6:45-7pm and start your day anywhere between 6:15-7. You wake up once or twice throughout the night for a snack. The sleep and nap thing isn’t overly consistent these days but we’ll get there someday, I know that much.

You are still only sporting two bottom teeth. We’ve thought we’ve seen evidence of your two bottom eye teeth (weird, I know) for quite some time, but nothing yet. As far as I can tell, your top teeth aren’t close yet. It’s a different game this time, as your sister already had a mouthful of chompers by your age.

You’ve been a bit of a chicken lately. You get scared easily and often. If Daddy blows his nose too loudly, or a toy drops to the floor to quickly, or the dog (heaven forbid) touches you with her paw, you get the whole pouty mouth lip quiver. It’s kind of cute but also sad. I know it’s just a stage that happens at this age and you’ll toughen up quick enough.

You’re a crawling machine, although your interest in crawling is getting less and less all the while. You stand on everything and anything and have perfect cruising. You’ll walk the entire way from the kitchen to the living room holding onto chairs, windowsills, walls, tables, and anything you can get your hands on. You’re starting to love walking holding our fingers as well. You stand unassisted for a few seconds at a time, usually when you don’t realize you’ve let go of whatever you were holding. See, baby? It’s all happening too soon!

Some other high lights this month are that you celebrated your first Easter, went to the sugar bush, met grass for the first time (well, since you were wee tiny), had a visit from Nana and fell down the three stairs at the back door (I guess this isn’t really a highlight, but it happened and you’re okay). Every day you have a blast playing with your big sister. You get so excited to play chase with her and want to follow her around all the time. I know I’m in for it because you’ve started to become very interested in grabbing whatever toy she has and you fuss and whine if she doesn’t give it to you. I foresee a lot of life lessons coming our way soon enough.

You are a joy if there ever was one. Such a sweet little light in my life. You have made my heart twice as big as I ever thought possible. I love you like crazy, you little stinkin’ ripper!

Love, Mama