Elsie Marie-9 Months

Three Quarters of a year...that is how old our little girl is now.  I can't believe she will be one year old in three months!  She is one busy little bee these days but is so much fun!  I love it!

This past month she had her Dr. appointment so her official weight on her chart was 18 lbs 3.5oz and 28.5" long.  When she wear her little jeans and tennis shoes she looks so much like a little toddler now even though she isn't walking yet haha.  She wears 3-6, 6-9, and 12 month tops, 12 month onesies, 12 month sleepers, and 12 month pants.  She is now is size 4 shoes.  Just growing like a weed these days :)

Elsie loves eating finger foods.  She has been eating puffs for awhile now but this past month we have moved onto other finger foods.  Elsie loves the little Gerber carrot and apple chunks and I cut up other food like pears, peaches, avocado for her to pick up.  The new foods this month are avocado, chicken, salba grain, oatmeal, yogurt and yogurt melts, the longer puff thingys, mum mums, wheat, teething biscuits, a little taste of some ice cream, broccoli, and spinach.  She has gotten good at spitting out her food at us when she is done or doesn't want something ;).  Oh boy!   We continue to tell her no spitting and how to sign that she is all done.  One of these days I am sure she will get it.  She is eating 3 meals a day.  For breakfast normally she will have cereal (either oatmeal or rice) and a fruit.  Lunch she has yogurt and a veggie, and dinner will be avocado, fruit, veggie, chicken, really whatever we feel like giving her.  I try to give her at least one finger food with each meal now.  She might have a snack or two throughout the day and I make sure those are finger foods like yogurt melts, puffs, or cut up fruit or carrots.  For bottle and formula she is still drinking about 5 times a day between 4-6 ounces each.  Some days she doens't want very much and some days she drinks a lot.  Her feeds that are consistent are her morning bottle and her right before bed bottle.  She almost always drinks at least 6 oz.  She has been getting a middle of the night bottle these past few weeks too (more on that in the next sleep section).

Looking back Elsie's sleep has been all over the place.  When I read the monthly blog posts the description of her sleeping habits is different each month.  Well this month it is the no different.  Her sleeping habits have changed once again.  Shortly after moving into her ninth month she began to wake between 3-5:00 AM and nothing would stop her from crying and being so upset except a bottle.  I DID NOT want to give her a bottle in the middle of the night.  I was worried it would start a bad habit.  I mean, she hadn't had a nightime feeding since she was like 3-4 months old.  Why would she need one now?  Amy, a friend of mine gave me some good advice and I began to feed her a nighttime bottle, hoping that it wouldn't last long, wouldn't become a habit, and wouldn't be something I would regret later.  I definitely don't regret it.  On tope of waking to eat she has also been waking up an additional 1-2 times a night and gets up for the day between 5:00-6:00.  When she wakes she gets so upset, cries hard and stands up in her crib crying Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma.  Uhh...we tried one night to make her "cry it out" for like 20 minutes and it was terrible and John and I decided we would never do it again.   I plan to write  a whole separate post about Elsie's lovely sleep habits and where she is at 9.5 months. Things have definitely changed.  We are still on the same bedtime routine as we have been and it seems to be going really well.  She goes to sleep without a fuss at all.  Same thing for naps most of the times.  Her morning nap starts between 8:30 and 9:00 and sleeps for about 45 minutes to and hour and her afternoon nap starts between 1:00-2:00 and lasts between 1 hour to 1.5 hours.  If she wakes up earlier than an hour I can typically get her to go back to sleep for another 30-45 minutes.

EVERYDAY I look at Elsie and see something new she is doing.  She is constantly learning something new or working to do something better.  It is so much fun!  One of the big changes I have seen in her over the past month is how she acts with books.  She still loves to put them in her mouth but she is also starting to treat them like books.  She sets them in her lap, she is learning to turn the pages, and the books that we read the most often she is learning how to lift the flaps, and is coming to expect what is on the next page.  It is amazing how she is learning those things!  She is also cruising around the furniture like crazy!  She is getting more brave each day with letting go of the furniture or my leg and testing her balance (which she doesn't have much of yet).  She has cried a couple of times when we tell her no and she is getting a little bit of a sass to her.  She will cry when we take something away (even if we give her something new to play with) or when we try to redirect her.  She knows what she wants and she tells you in her own little way when she isn't getting it.  I think this is something we will deal with for the next 18 years haha.  She loves to play with her foam letters and shapes still, she absolutely adores Cinder and is getting more and more brave of being close to her and Cinder is doing a wonderful job of letting Elsie pet her and climb on her.  She loves to play with her clean cloth diapers, likes to carry things all around the house, and has begun to be pretty proficient in climbing the stairs and trying to climb up the furniture.  We are still working on waving bye bye and pointing to her nose, mouth, etc.  She just isn't quite there yet where she is doing it all the time.  She is still jabbering like crazy and I love how she has inflection in her "words".

This month things have slowed down a bit with all of our activities.  We went back down to Lake Rathbun over Labor Day, we celebrated both my parent's birthdays, we found out my brother is engaged, and Elsie is no longer the youngest grandchild since my sister had her little baby girl!

We are so much looking forward to the last quarter of this little girl's first year of life!!!!