9 Months Old

Callie is 9 months old today!

She is growing like a weed! She is a happy, giggly 9 month old.

Her recent stats are weight: 18.4 lbs (57%), height: 27 inches (48%), Head 47.5 cm (99%)

As I was feeding her yesterday, I was thinking about how things that I have worried so much about seem to work themselves out eventually. It sort of makes me laugh. Take for instance the eating issue. I was just sure Callie was never going to eat anything but breastmilk for her whole life. Like until she went to college. Now she will eat just about anything I put on her high chair tray.

And she has a good time doing it.

Sometimes we don't make this big of a mess. Sometimes we make an even bigger mess. You just never know. On this particular day, she had veggies with whole wheat pasta, grapes, bananas, and blueberries and wheat bread in her eyebrows. Nice.

A favorite food item of Callie's right now is her puffs. We can get her to do just about anything for those puffs. Including learn the sign for "more." She's getting it. She puts her hands together after I remind her of it. She much prefers to bang her hands on her tray to let us know she wants more. We're working on it.

This is a favorite flavor, but she'll eat any of them.

Callie is all over the place these days. The only place she can be contained is in her high chair or her excersaucer, of which she is quickly outgrowing and becoming not so much a fan.

That is, until a few weeks ago, when Nana bought her this:

We lovingly refer to it as "the cage" and it is the best thing since the video monitor as far as baby stuff goes. At least in my opinion. She's got a pretty sweet set-up in there as you can see with toys to play with and practice standing by and a mirror to admire herself. There are also books and maracas (from mommy and daddy's recent Cancun trip, more on that in another post) and a variety of other little toys at her beck and call. She loves for us to get in "the cage" with her and play. In fact, if you get in with her to play and read with her for about 10 minutes, then you can get out and have 20 minutes or so to do whatever you need to do before she tires of being in there alone. Can you say lifesaver??

She has started to do fun things like dance a little while standing up and give sweet, open mouth kisses.

She can also now hold her bottle all by herself. The silly girl could probably do that for a while now, but she apparently likes for me to do it for her.

While on a break during her 9 month picture photoshoot, my friend Keysha told me to let her hold her own bottle. I said that she can't get it tipped up enough yet to do that. She said, "Girl, I saw her hold up 5 pound toys over her head earlier. She can hold her own bottle." HA! And she did. Just like that. Think she might be playing her mommy a little??

Callie has 4 teeth and is cutting 2 more. Which teeth? Well, that's the weird part. She has her two bottom teeth and has for a while and now has her two canines...the fang teeth. We call her our little vampire. She is cutting the two front teeth as well as you can see in this picture.

Callie is still getting up in the wee hours of the morning for a bottle. Trying to faze that out. It normally happens at 4am nowadays. I feed her a 4oz bottle at that time and am continuing to decrease that to try to stop her from waking up.

During the day, she now eats three 6oz bottles and baby food 3 times a day as well.

She has started to consistently take three 2-hour naps each day. One in the morning, one at noon, and one in the evening. Just as soon as we get in that routine, she will probably change that. ;)

When I put her in her crib for a nap or bedtime, she sits in there and plays a while before falling asleep. Or sometimes she cries for a bit. But eventually she falls asleep. Sometimes it cracks me up how she sleeps.

She's not in jail, it just creates those lines on the screen when I take a picture of the monitor. It's strange. They aren't there on my picture viewer but as soon as I snap the picture, there they are. But can you see her? Arms behind her head, legs propped up. So funny!

We are having so much fun with our sweet, fun-loving 9 month old!