Life on the Road Less Traveled: Rose is 9 Months

On November 7th, Rose turned 9 Months. This continues to be a fun age - for the most part. Today's weight at her wellness visit was 18lbs, 4oz (37% percentile) and 27inches (27% percentile). She doesn't seem short or slim to me - we've been transitioning out of the 9 month clothes and into some 12 month outfits. And, considering we have been all over the board with weights and heights at the doctor's office, I'm gonna say their systems aren't calibrated! :)

9 Months

Here's a summary of Rose at 9 Months:

Our mobile crawler is now a "cruiser" - meaning she stands on things and moves from place-to-place holding on. She can get all the way around the coffee table on her feet and she is pretty bold, using just one hand fairly often. She is frequently on the move, whether it be crawling, cruising, moving from sitting to standing and back to sitting, etc. We've been practicing walking while holding her hands - but she prefers to cruise on her own. I think she's going to be little Miss Independent.

We've started barricading spaces in the house - especially the stairs. Check out the video of Rose climbing the entire staircase from the first level to the second. She was motivated to reach the bag of candy. Plastic just sounds like so much fun in your hands!

Rose seems to enjoy school, as you may have been able to tell from the last picture post of her activities. Some days she would rather stay with mommy and other days she just wants to be put down to play with her friends. Her best friend at school is William, who is just one month older than Rose. At 10 months she moves into the 10month-18month class. William and another 10-month-old just moved up to the next class, so Rose is now the oldest in her class. I frequently remind her to be gentle with the younger babies who are not yet crawling.

Rose loves saying goodbye to everyone. At school, I've been told on numerous occasions that she sends everyone off with a wave. Often it's a full arm wave goodbye, but sometimes she curls her fingers into a fist to say goodbye. Colin calls it her Italian "Ciao, Bella" goodbye.

On her developmental checklist at the doctor, waving goodbye is an 11-month-old developmental task. Filling out the form made me a proud mama. In addition to the waving, her ability to cruise, know mama and say mama, and ability to pick things up with the pincer grasp are all older baby tasks. She's met all her developmental milestones at 9 months and has quite a few 10 and 11-month-old milestones down.

This month Rose caught her first virus at school - the super contagious, but thankfully mild "Hand, Foot, and Mouth." William caught it first and passed it on to Rose (they share a lot!). He was out all week with a high fever. I got the call Tuesday morning to pick her up and we kept her out all week not because she acted sick, but because she would probably infect the other kids. Her fever never raised above 99 degrees and she acted fine the whole week. If she didn't get some blisters on her hands, I would not have believed she had the virus. I spent two days at home with her and Colin spent the the final two days before the weekend. I'm pretty sure Colin was ready for Rose to go to school on Monday after they had 4 days together! I managed to get the following awesome video of her talking while she was home "sick." People warned me that I could get the virus from her - especially since she loves giving open-mouth kisses - but if I did get anything, I couldn't tell.

Rose still loves the letter "f" and now also loves "ba-ba-ba" and "ma-ma-ma." We sing lots of "Ba-Ba Black Sheep."

This month Rose has taken the leap to generally eating what we eat. We had a dinner party at my former supervisor's house and she was on her best behavior, eating lots of the pork, butternut squash, and grapes. She could eat her weight in grapes, with meat (of any type) being a close second. She is now starting to stick out her tongue to taste food before deciding if she wants it or not. When she doesn't want any more she uses her hands to push the food away and/or keeps her mouth sealed shut. She's also pretty good at drinking from a cup.

We still get 5-6 hour stretches of sleep, but they continue to be at random times at night. Sometimes she goes to bed at 8 and is up at 12am for a feed and then goes her long stretch until 5-6am. Other times, she goes to bed at 8 and sleeps until 1-2am and then does her second stretch. She's generally pretty sleepy at 5 or 6am and likes going back to sleep until 8am. The time change this month worked to our advantage because she was struggling to get up before 8am, which made getting to work on time very difficult! For the past week or two, she's been up and happy closer to 7-7:30am. For the past few months, Colin and I have said countless time that we have the perfect child - minus her sleeping pattern. Today, the doctor suggested we need to put her to bed in her crib awake. She's never had a problem going to sleep - it's the staying asleep that is the problem. Both last night and tonight she was put to bed awake and fell asleep on her own without trouble. One of these nights I'm hoping a pattern of sleeping through the night will develop.

Little Miss Independent is also Miss Curious or Miss Doesn't-Want-To-Miss-A-Thing! Naps at school are two or three 20-30 minute stretches. The only place Rose will nap longer than 45 minutes is in the carseat or in the stroller. We sometimes park the stroller in the house and let her continue her nap so she gets a decent one in on the weekends. Sunday she slept 2 hours in the stroller!

We continue to use cloth diapers at all times except overnight, but it looks like the elastic band on some of our regular diapers are starting to stretch and I think she is having more clothes changes (because of leaking) at school. I've read about people replacing the elastic on several cloth diapering online groups and need to investigate further to extend the life of the diapers. I'm surprised they are already stretched at 9 months, but we do wear/wash them twice a week.

I am so excited to report that Rose has still never been given any formula. The drop in my milk supply and thought of giving her formula was really stressing me out and I received an outpouring of support from some mothers after last month's post. I've been eating oatmeal almost every day and I bought some fenugreek supplements that are meant to increase supply. I have noticed a slight increase in the amount of milk I pump. Whether it's related to the oatmeal, fenugreek, or a decrease in physical activity I don't know. Outdoor soccer season has come to an end, so I'm now just playing 1-2 hours a week as opposed to the 3-6 hours I was playing in September and October.

Check out some of our fun pictures from this month: