9 Months!

Alexandra is nine months old!  I can’t believe it – more time out of the womb than in it!  She’s doing great, just thriving like crazy. 

CRAWLING!  Everywhere – loves crawling, and pulls herself up to her knees.  This new-found freedom makes her so happy.  She’s pulling up to her knees, and is so close to pulling herself up to her feet.  If we help her, she loves to hang out standing, and will even shuffle here and there a bit.  We took an online test about her personality (like the old Cosmo quizzes, but somehow different…) and the quiz classified her as ACTIVE!  For sure.  No cuddling, unless she’s drinking out of a bottle, and even then she wants to look around.  Always wiggling around, trying to move.  She loves chasing me and the dogs from room to room, always wanting to be around us.  If she sees one of the dogs lying down, she’ll go up to its side and crawl up onto it, but keeping her knees on the ground.  Then she grabs on, and jumps up and down, but on her knees.  It looks a bit like she’s trying to hump the dog!  Such huge grins, always!

EATING:  such a good eater.  She usually has 5 bottles per day, with 6-7 ounces in each bottle.  Plus she has 3 meals per day, two with purees or chunky baby food, but at dinner I now give her table food.  It’s actually quite handy – she eats all our leftovers!  Last night she had grilled chicken, steamed broccoli and plums.  I just cut them up into little pieces, and she feeds herself.  Served with a sippy cup of water, which she loves.  She has also figured out how to drink out of a regular straw, which is quite handy at restaurants.  And she likes to try to drink out of my glass, but that usually involves lots of water down the front.  So we usually practice that in the bathtub when I take a bath with her on the weekends, which she LOVES!  Also, she has her first tooth – finally!  It’s so cute, and I’m happy to report that teething wasn’t too bad.  A little grumpier than normal, but it didn’t interrupt sleep or anything. 

SLEEPING:  Great sleeper, as always.  Sleeps all night, just about every night.  We are down to about one wake-up at night per month or so.  During the day, on weekends, she takes great naps.  She’ll have two naps each day, for about 1.5-2 hours each nap.  But during the week at daycare, she barely sleeps at all!!!  I hate it, and I’ve talked with the daycare people about it, but they don’t know what to do either.  She will hang out in her crib just fine, but the problem is she’ll spend the entire time jabbering with her friend Abby.  That’s right, she has a best buddy already.  The nice thing is I work with Abby’s mom, so we compare notes all the time.  I’ve even suggested splitting up their cribs so they can get more sleep, but the daycare people said I was being mean – they like spending time together.  Plus if she sleeps next to another child she’ll just jabber with them too…  The problem is they don’t really see it as a problem.  She’s in a great mood, all day long, with or without naps.  Most days she only sleeps for 30-45 minutes at school.  And yesterday she didn’t have a nap at all!  But she’s happy!  The problem is she falls asleep on the way home from daycare, I transfer her into her crib, she sleeps for an hour or so, wakes up, has dinner and then a bottle, and goes back to sleep.  So besides a 45 minute total waketime for dinner, a little play, and then a bottle, she is essentially sleeping from 5:30 pm when I pick her up to about 7:00 am the next morning!  I guess I should just accept this, as she seems happy.  But I never get to see her!  It’s like I don’t have a baby at all – I just have a baby who sleeps and eats a little at my house!  I miss her terribly, and it makes this working thing even harder…

I live for the weekends with my baby girl, as we have so much fun.  She’s started to make fabulously high pitched squeals!  This drives some people crazy, but I love it as it usually comes with huge smiles.  But my favorite thing that she has just started doing is waving and clapping.  If she sees someone new, she’ll wave with both hands – huge full-arm waves.  And then start clapping.  I love it!  It’s her first social greeting!!!

We leave on Friday for a weekend trip to Denver to see family, and I’m very excited.  I can’t wait to see the family and our friends interact with Alex, and see how much she’s grown.  Plus I’m very excited to spend some good time with her since I have a 4-day weekend.  But I may have to fight her grandma for time…  But the good news is we have a babysitter for some evenings of fun!  We already have two evenings planned for after bedtime.  I may be tired this weekend from staying up late and getting up early with Alex, but I think it will be a great time.  I only hope Alex sleeps well and is ok on the flight!  Wish us luck!