Month Nine

5.12.2016


Our little love has been out as long as she was in! This month's highlights include two top teeth, rolling, and table food. Let's talk about it.

Eat

The entire concept of feeding a child has been stressful. First they are newborns, and you don't know when or how much or really anything about feeding them. Then you get that down and you have to start real food. Purees, rice cereal, baby-led weaning. Ugh. Too many choices.

We went the homemade puree route, which worked really well for us from about five and a half months until around eight and a half months. She started off slowly, but soon she was sucking down puree cubes like they were going out of style, and we decided to move her on up to baby-led weaning. 

What is baby-led weaning, you ask? It's a fancy name for giving your baby small chunks of table food. I don't know why everyone is acting all hip about this baby-led weaning concept. This is what people have been doing for centuries. Don't get me started.
Anyway. We still give her purees when we are on the go (food pouches are great for travel!), but when we are at home she eats basically what we eat. She is pretty good at eating and gets a fair amount into her mouth and not on the floor yet! She hasn't seemed picky, although she definitely seemed to especially enjoy some BBQ chicken one night.

I am still breastfeeding 3x a day (morning, night, and at noon for lunch), and she takes a bottle 2x a day. About halfway through the month I started mixing formula in with her breastmilk bottles for daycare because I was not able to pump enough at work. I plan on writing a post more about that later, but long story short, it's going well!

Sleep

The beginning of the month was great, the middle of the month was a complete disaster of a train wreck, and now at the end of the month she's doing much better. She cut two top teeth this month, and for a week she basically woke up every other hour all night long crying and wanted to be rocked back to sleep. 

Once the teeth popped through, she was still waking up throughout the night to be held even though nothing was wrong with her. She would stop crying immediately when we picked her up. So one night we decided to just let her cry it out and learn to sooth herself back to sleep. It was a long night for all three of us, but she has slept through the night every night since then! (Which has been about a week at the writing of this post, so we'll see if this trend continues.)
She takes awful naps at daycare (two naps each about half an hour), which to be honest bothers me but I don't know what to do about it. Advice, anyone? On the weekends, however, she she started taking naps that are 2-3 hours long! Yay! I put her in her sleep sack, lay her in the crib, and she passes out. Poor thing probably needs to catch up on all the naps she missed out on during the week.

Play

No crawling yet, but she can somehow get where she wants to go with a combination of a roll/spin move that is pretty impressive to watch (see video at the end of this post!). They tell me that at daycare she just rolls all over, all day long, and is such a good girl! She can go from sitting to lying down and does great on her stomach for long periods of time. But when she wants to sit up again, she just hollers until we come help.

She absolutely loves being outside, and I try to take her on a walk or a run after work every other day or so, if not every day.
She babbles dada all the time and sometimes baba. I keep working on mama, but so far nothing yet. We are trying to teach her some basic baby sign language for more, all done, eat, and milk. She just stares at us right now, but I think if we keep at it, she will catch on. Overall, she is just such a joy and we love her so much!

Her basic schedule looks like this: 
5:30 wake up/nurse
7:15 drop off at daycare
9:00 4 oz puree at daycare
9:30 bottle (6 oz)
Nap (although sometimes she straight up skips this one)
12:30 nurse (visit on my lunch hour)
Nap (half hour to an hour long)
3:00 2-4 oz puree at daycare
3:30 bottle (5-6 oz)
4:30 pick up at daycare
(Sometimes she crashes and takes a short nap)
6:00 dinner (table food)
7:00 nurse
7:30 bed
Lately I have gotten into making videos using iMovie on my Mac. It's so fun! I put together this one of R's first nine months. I'm sure not all of you are interested in sitting through nearly five minutes of videos of my baby, but if you do, you will be rewarded at the end by a funny parenting fail. Just a teaser! Enjoy!
Laura Darling said...

She is so cute and getting so big!! I didn't realize giving babies table food had such a fancy, trendy name! Too funny.

Audrey Louise said...

Oh my goodness, she is so adorable! Cutting teeth can be tough but it sounds like the three of your made it through this month virtually unharmed :) I love that elephant chair!

Leslie Lukens Martin said...

LOVE LOVE LOVE the video so very much! When did you find time to do that?!!? :) It's very possible that R might just skip crawling completely. You have such a pretty baby girl...and her little giggles are the best!

Rach said...

The clip with her kicking the soccer ball was adorable!

I don't know how your mixing formula & breast milk thing makes you feel, but I have known lots of moms who have supplemented like that and it has been so good for them and their baby! Emotional for those who hoped to breastfeed exclusively for a year, but still a good choice and less stress on them in the end. Anyway, I don't know where you fall on how you feel about it, but know that you aren't the only one!

The Lady Okie said...

Thanks for saying that. It has really been stressful and emotional for me for the last few months. I really didn't want to have to get formula, and I cried a lot about it, but once I finally did it and R took the bottle just fine, I realized it was such a load off for me and I really do feel okay about it now. I've been praying about it, and although I didn't get the answer I wanted, he did answer my prayers in feeling okay about the outcome. She's healthy and full and that's what counts! It is frustrating that I do make enough milk if I weren't at work, but it is what it is.

The Lady Okie said...

I've been putting it together throughout the past nine months, so it's not like I did it all in one go! That's my secret :)

Sarah Smith said...

The girls are getting so big!! Happy 9 months R!! The crawling will come soon enough, whenever she is ready, and you will miss the days that she just stayed put haha! P is getting into EVERYTHING these days! Also...the video is so so precious! I am getting a new macbook soon and can't wait to have imovie again!!

pdot95 said...

Oh my goodness, that video was just adorable! As far as the napping at daycare goes, she's at a group center, right? If they have all the babies napping in one room (which most group centers do), she is probably getting woken up by the noises of the other babies. Especially coming from a home where she's the only kid right now, it's probably pretty quiet at home while she naps. This is where I'm lucky to be an in home provider. Every baby sleeps in a different room and they all have fans for white noise. :)

Andrea H. said...

Super cute video! I love that you have put them all together. And holy smokes...how has it been nine months already?!? I'm sure it feels even faster for you...but time is really moving in a flash! Hope you have a lovely weekend :)

AnneMarie said...

Fellow Oklahoman! (I don't know if I fully classify, since I've been living here for just under a year, but I don't think I'll be leaving anytime soon so I'll go with that) She is so cute! I really like reading these updates, and will have to go back to re-read the other monthly updates, since I'll be going into labor with my first in about a month. This is such a fun idea to keep track of progress and changes!

Anonymous said...

Haha, I love the personality that comes out in the chair scenes of the film especially!

Are your caretakers willing to put R. in the sleepsack, since that's part of the routine that works for you at home? I'm not really a good person to advise on this since my baby's a poor napper too, but I wonder if the sleepsack might help R. feel more consistency between home and daycare--just a thought. You are doing such a great job with her!

Beka @ Sunshine to the Square Inch said...

This is so interesting! It's fun to see babies grow. And girl what the heck? Baby led weaning??? That is the strangest name. It's called food. I wonder why American's complicate everything? That's the girl who lived in Asia that is speaking out..... ;)

I wonder if at daycare when they put her down for a nap, if they hold her if she cries. Maybe they need to be told to let her cry it out? I don't know. Maybe that would wake all the other children? That's the only thing that came to my mind.

That's so crazy that she has been here for 9 months. It seems longer than that. =)

Jenny Evans said...

9 months? Woah, slow down, girl!

I had to laugh at your comment on baby-led weaning. It SOUNDS so progressive, but really, the concept is just... feeding your baby food.

We do a combination of homemade purees, and grinding up whatever we're having for dinner in a baby food mill, and BLW-type feeding. Probably less pureeing and more baby led weaning this time, though, because I'm getting more tired. :)

Julie @ Just the Joy's said...

I need to learn how to make videos! I have so many I would love to do something with them. I just got a Mac but I have no idea what I'm doing on it yet. Ha! Sorry to hear about the sleep troubles, but I'm glad the crying it out has worked for sleeping through the night ever since! Poor girl must just not be comfortable at daycare to nap! Does she have her sleep sack there? She's getting so big I just love that smile! She's such a happy girl!

The Lady Okie said...

That's a great suggestion! They do use a sleep sack with her at daycare, which is actually where I got the idea to do it at home because they said she really likes it. I think it's just so much noise, etc., that it's hard for her to quiet down. Probably the nature of daycare. She's doing good there otherwise, though, so I can't complain too much!

The Lady Okie said...

The videos are so fun! I love them. They really aren't that hard... I'm telling you, if I can do it, anyone can :)

Amy @ A Desert Girl said...

Sweet 3/4 of a year old baby! She's so adorable. I love that you are loving being her mama. :)

Also I need to watch the video! I was nursing Ava when I first read your post though and she would have been way distracted by the sound of the video and now I'm a work and the IT guy is in my office so I'd feel bad making it obvious that I'm not working on work stuff at this moment.... haha!

Erin LFF said...

The term baby-led weaning has always annoyed me because YES, it's just giving your kid food that you're eating. No need to make it sound all fancy/different haha! Glad she's been such a good eater for you guys though and that it's going well :) I love the little video you've put together, I think I'll try to do something like that for our little guy. Love the "fail" at the end too ;) R is such a cutie!

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