The Pruett Place: Carly at Nine months

This post is a little past due. It is really more like Carly at nine and a half months.
Since my last write up Carly is crawling everywhere and fast! Over Christmas break she started to really master it and now she is all over the place. I have also started giving her little pieces of cheese now. She really seems to like it when I give her grated cheese, not sliced cheese. We give her a mix of baby food and finger foods. She is getting better and better about eating finger foods. Over the break her other front tooth started coming in. It was funny for awhile that she just had one front tooth on the top. Now both front teeth are about the same length. It makes her look so much older with her little teeth. She also has two more teeth coming in beside her top front teeth. Whoa! It is like you can see what she is going to look like as a little girl. I have been working on sleep training her again because she would wake up about an hour after putting her down at bedtime and would want to be soothed or nursed. So a couple of nights ago I had to make her cry it out some when Kamara was spending the night. Kamara spent the night with me with her girls because Zack was out of town. He went to Big Bend for five nights. It kills me to have Carly cry it out since she doesn’t have another soothing mechanism like a lovie or pacifier. She does like her little blanket, but that is different. Anyway, after about an hour of working on it she fell asleep. Then she slept till 5:00 am. Last night she slept till 4:00 am and then I waited for about 40 minutes till I went in to feed her. I am just going to keep trying to push her to go longer till she makes it till the morning. We are now giving her medicine every other day to see how it goes with her reflux. At her nine month appt. she weighed 18.5 pounds. This puts her between 25-50 percent for her weight. Her length was 50 percent and her head is 75 percent. Her percentage weight has gone down, but they were not concerned. I think a big part of that is the crawling. Most days she still just seems to take one nap unless she cat naps in the car or stroller. I will try to put her down for morning naps, but she doesn’t always seem tired or interested. She will sleep anywhere from an hour to 2.5 hours when she takes one nap. She usually wakes up between 2:00-3:30 pm from her nap and goes to bed between 7-7:30 pm. Then she wakes up around 7:30-8:00 am. She loves to crawl up to me for me to hold her. She will still lay her head on your shoulder if somebody is talking to her and she is being shy. It is precious! She still likes to wave her hands. She is really pretty good about picking up food. However, she also loves dropping food and other objects. I had forgotten how messy it can be when they are first learning to feed themselves! Kate will continue to pick up things for her when Carly is in her booster seat eating. I have to then tell Kate to stop so Carly will stop. It is sweet to see them interacting together. Some times they both get jealous of each other and they are both wanting me to hold them. That can be fun! Carly still does not have much hair. Carly loves to make all kinds of noises now, especially "Da, Da, Da". She is obsessed with climbing on the fireplace. We are always having to move her away from it! A couple of days ago I turned around and saw her standing up holding on a toy all by herself. This was the first time I witnessed her going to a standing position by herself. She was so happy to be standing! She doesn’t really like to be in anything where she is confined anymore. That means that she doesn’t really like the pack and play, exersaucer, or doorway jumper anymore. This makes it hard when I need her to be confined. That also means that I am carrying her in the backpack more often when I am trying to work on something. She is now wearing 12 month clothes. We still have to give her an extra spoon when feeding her so that she has one to play with.
Some of her favorite snacks are ritz crackers and apple slices. I am always trying new foods with her. She is not too crazy about Cheerios yet. I do break up pieces of bread for her for breakfast every day. Since she nurses in the early morning she will usually only nurse off of one side in the late morning. She will nurse again before her nap and sometimes she will nurse off of one side before dinner. Then she nurses again before bedtime. So she nurses about 4 times a day. I continue to work with her on sippy cups but she hasn’t really taken to them too well yet. It is hard to believe that she is getting close to a year now. I know she will continue to change a lot over the next couple of weeks and months. We just love our sweet girls!

This was taken actually on her 9 month birthday. This captures her one top front tooth. You will see in the other pictures that her other top tooth has since come through.