Nine Months!

Our baby girl is 9 months old!

I can hardly believe it.  She is growing so fast. At her 9-month appointment last week she weighed:

15lbs, 6.5oz (9.5%)

Length: 25.7" (2.62%)

Head Circ: 43.3 (36.45%)

So, she's still pretty tiny, but she's growing, and that's what counts.  People are often surprised that she's as old as she is, because of her size, but she's doing just fine developmentally.

Cecily started sitting a few weeks ago, and now she's old-hat at it.  She's always reaching for what's just outside her reach, so she's often reaching forward until she falls on her head.

She has learned to be very resourceful in finding what she wants, there is very little that is safe from this little one any longer.

Cecily will put absolutely anything and everything in her mouth.  Which means that I am constantly fishing pine needles out of her mouth.  I run the vacuum every day (thank goodness for the Roomba), but I can't seem to keep the stuff out of her mouth.  She is much worse about this than Parker was, so I'm learning to be more vigilant about the state of our carpets.

She's starting to vocalize a little bit more.  We get the occasional "Mamma", but for the most part, she just screeches whenever she's happy, sad, angry, etc.

Cecily will eat just about anything, with the exception of baby food.  (My Mom said the exact thing about me as a baby, so I guess she comes by it naturally)  She'll still eat the store-bought baby food pouches, but for the most part, the only home-made baby food she'll eat is sweet potatoes, but even those, she wants to eat with her hands.

For everything else, Cecily eats whatever we're eating, cut up into tiny pieces.  When I was away at the Women's retreat a few weeks ago, Keith took the kiddos over to Grandma's house for dinner, where Cecily got her first taste of lasagna.  No one technically fed it to her, but she didn't let that get in her way, and she helped herself to a fistful off Denise's plate.  

Now she screams & hollers until she gets a little of everything off my plate.

I was really nervous about leaving her home for the weekend while I went off to the retreat, especially since she wouldn't take a bottle.  But, she did great, she ate enough of the bottles to be happy, AND she slept through the night both nights, for the first time since she was four months old.  It was amazing!  She even held onto it for a week after I got home, but then she got a little cold and it all went down the tubes.  She's back to waking up 2-3 times at night, but now I know that she can do it, we just need to remind her of that.

Cecily is becoming an adorable, happy baby.  I know that all Moms think that their babies are beautiful, but I am constantly getting comments from people/strangers about what a pretty baby I have, so I don't think I'm completely making this up.

...and check out that hair!

Cecily has started getting up on all fours in the past week.  She's not crawling yet, so she often ends up in this position:

Then she flattens down onto her tummy & starts screaming to be picked up.

She doesn't have any teeth yet, but she's often sticking her tongue out like this:

Which Parker did the week or two before his first tooth came out, so I think they're just around the corner.  I think Parker's first tooth came in May sometime also, so she seems to be following his pattern fairly well.

I'm not sure if I'm making this up or not, but I could swear that Cecily has learned the sign for "more", she's not always doing it at the contextually correct time, but it does seem that she's indicating that she wants something.  It would be great if this little one could find a way to communicate that didn't involve screaming her head off.

At her 9-month appointment, Cecily tested slightly anemic, so we have her on prescription iron drops (in addition to the menagerie of other drops we're already giving her).  I think they upset her stomach, since no matter what time of day or night I give them to her, she wakes up four hours later screaming.  I'm not sure how much longer I'm willing to try these out, maybe I can just start feeding her steak for breakfast.

We love our sweet little pixie.  I'm excited to see her continue to grow & develop, but it makes me a little sad that our baby is growing up so fast.