9 Months

Dear Annie,
You are now 9 months and 5 days old. You had your 9 month check-up yesterday with Dr. Eaton. Here are your stats:

You are 28.25 inches tall
You weigh 20 pounds and 6 ounces
Your head is 17.75 inches around

I don't have the sheet with the percentiles with me, but you jumped up into the 70th or so percentile for weight and I believe you are in the 80th for height. Dr. Eaton reiterated that you are perfect. We discussed you eating "table food" (which makes me feel like you are a dog getting table scraps, but I will get over that) and I ran down the list of "grown-up" things you eat:

eggs (but only when I am eating them, you hate them when they are your own dedicated eggs)

apples cut into teeny tiny slivery pieces

strawberries

watermelon (lets just assume everything on this list is in tiny pieces unless otherwise indicated)

bread

brown rice

beans

crab-tried it once, just to cross it off the list of possible allergies

PEANUT BUTTER

We are still giving you rice cereal maybe once a day (usually lunch) and then you eat regular baby food for breakfast and dinner. You are still getting 3-4 bottles of formula a day, but have become quite proficient at drinking water out of your sippy cup. You can be trusted to feed yourself finger foods, unless those finger foods are puffs (regular or yogurt). In those cases, you must be watched like a hawk or you will stuff your little mouth full of them.

You crawled for the first time yesterday. It wasn't a traditional crawl, but more like a snake that grew an arm and a leg on one side of its body. You then would use one arm/leg to pull/push and then roll to the side to reposition, then pull/push again. It's not going to win any gracefulness points, but it got you to that baby doll, and that's what is important. Speaking of the baby doll, you are now able to give kisses on demand. A warning to anyone that tries this little trick with Annie, this is no kindergarten peck on the lips. This is a full, open mouth, PG-13 tongue action. You commit to the kiss. I really need to cut down on all the Soaps you've been watching.

I feel like everything is happening at once. You are now moving around in your army worm crawl, you clap, you wave, you hand us toys, you feed yourself. It's almost too much to take. I peeked in on you the other day on our Annie cam and you were sitting up in your crib. I had seen you do that "in real life" but never on the camera and it stopped me in my tracks. After seeing your little body all sprawled out for 9 months, to just see the top of your head was quite a shock!

You are impossibly sweet and happy baby. People comment on it all the time. Even your screams seem to be happy and they tend to make you laugh after a particularly loud one. I love those screams because it makes it very easy to find you and your Dad when we are out shopping.

You don't really let me rock you to sleep any more. I guess all that sleep training really worked out, but now it makes me sad. At bed time, after we brush those two sweet little teeth, you and I go back in and sit in our chair. You will usually give me brief moment where you will lay your head on my chest and then about 10 seconds later you will arch your back towards your crib. You are usually asleep within minutes and have been going to bed around 6:30 on most nights. You sleep until 6:15-6:30 in the morning. It is really amazing.

A rare photo of the two of us. In stripes, of course.

Twenty years from now, I hope I remember how sweet and fuzzy your hair feels on my face when I am putting on your socks, how quickly you seem to remove your socks/shoes every time we get you in your car seat, how you arch your back and squinch up your face to let me know you no longer want to be stapped into your chair/rocker, how impossibly white the whites of your eyes are, how obsessed I am with those two little teeth because they make you look so big, the sweet pads on the back of your hands because they remind me that you are still so little, and how my heart aches and soars every time you learn something new.

I love you more than Puffs (you) and nachos (me),

mom