I absolutely cannot believe I’m the mom of a 9-month-old little dude. Fastest and best 9 months of my life; I am so thankful for a great pregnancy, but he’s so much more fun on the outside!
I feel like nothing has changed and at the same time EVERYTHING has changed. His transitions from each milestone to the next are so smooth and almost seamless, so it feels like he’s always been pulling himself up on the coffee table. Like he came out of the womb that way or something! Right now he’s working on trying to pull up on anything and everything, realistic or not, and if he’s not crawling somewhere or standing up he’s probably throwing a fit because he’s not doing one of those two. All the dude wants to do is be an independent walker!
Another big development is that he just cut his first tooth last weekend! I wasn’t sure if he was ever going to have teeth – my mom and I joke that we had to look into baby dentures – but lo and behold there’s a little tooth poking through on his lower gums. He’ll bite into a cup or something and constantly has his hand in his mouth feeling and figuring out what it is.
With this whole tooth business we’ve been working on “brushing” his mouth with a washcloth, which he hates of course, and trying new foods. It’s an interesting time with food by the way; he still likes eating but he’s wanting larger pieces of food (i.e. a whole mini muffin, not torn into bite-sized pieces) because he likes biting into it. Honestly he’s really good at the whole bite-chew-swallow thing, although I am constantly nervously watching and making sure there’s no gagging going on. Nothing just yet anyway!
He’s also decided that nursing just doesn’t work for him anymore, which has been a little hard for me. I’m not upset about giving him formula, but the bonding that comes from nursing…well, I miss it. He basically has weaned himself down to nursing 1-2 times a day max and the rest of his liquid nutrition is coming from pumped milk or formula. At first it was hard physically for me, but now we’re doing OK with it.
Toys-wise his favorite things are: remotes with the batteries removed, old cell phones that are turned off, his baby-sized hangers and plastic cups. Notice a trend there? He does love to play with his designated toys, but anything that’s not a toy is more likely to hold his attention. I think Nate and I are going to just wrap empty boxes for him for Christmas…yes, really. It’s all he’ll care about from us anyway!
Finally let’s chat about sleep. YIKES. Homeskillet is still waking up 1-2 times a night (those are the nursing times coincidentally) and we are working on some sleep training, but nothing seems to have worked just yet. Most nights he’s waking up around 3:30 or 4:30am and then sleeping until around 6:30 or 7, but there are definitely some nights where he just doesn’t want to sleep, like last night. Part of me believes that it has to do with the teething situation, which we’re handling with Orajel/Children’s Tylenol/homeopathic teething pills as recommended by our pediatrician. So we’re working through it and could use good vibes coming our way 😉
As I said before, these 9 months have been so fun and I can’t believe how they’ve flown by. I’m surprised and so blessed how much being a mom has suited me; it’s not that I thought I would be a bad mother, but I was never around young children or babies a lot growing up so I had no idea how I would handle it. It’s incredible though, and I can’t wait for the next however many months and years to come!
**All photos for this month are from Instagram…turns out that chasing him around the house with a camera is harder than I thought ;)**
Prettiest eyes of any baby on the planet. Hands down.
I have to admit I think they are too 😉
How sweet, your little guy is precious! I too have a 9 month old and I cannot believe HOW ACTIVE he is. Seriously, it’s insane. I feel like he went from just barely moving to be being into EVERYTHING. My little man also prefers everything else as oppose to his toys. He especially loves electronics (must get that from daddy!). I hear ya on the sleep situation, we’ve been working on getting a schedule established but with teething it’s hard to really stick to something completely, but its a work in progress. Oh & yes, I think we’re gonna wrap up boxes too just because he loves tearing up paper; he’s already taken off a few of the bows from the presents that are under our tree. I never thought there could be such an adorable bow snatcher 🙂 lol
Wes loves the TV remote – we actually took the batteries out of the DVD remote for him to play with and he totally knows that it doesn’t work and reaches for the TV one instead. How does he know this already?!
They are SO SMART! My husband laughs bc everytime we are watching the TV, Aiden has somehow managed to turn on the closed captioning or muted the tv without even trying, but when he (my hubby) needs to simply change the channel he’ll struggle getting the receiver to pick up the command from the remote. LOL
Oh, hi blue-eyed heart breaker! 🙂
Such a beautiful and happy boy Heather! You are a wonderful mother and it has been fun watching your little man grow up right before our eyes. He will sleep soon, it’s probably the teeth and being extra hungry. Could be a growth spurt and he is looking for more food;-) I am sure Christmas with big empty boxes will be a blast!
Girl, I cannot wait til Christmas with our dude!
He is so cute! And if you makes you feel better (since it seems like every baby sleeps like perfect -ha), Xander still doesn’t sleep through the night either. But I’m also convinced the teething issues are part of it. At least we’re getting some 6 hour stretches now verse the 3-4 we were getting!
I’m so glad it’s not me – I feel like everyone else’s kiddo(s) sleep so well, and Wes does…but it could be better. I still like the midnight snuggles, but I sure do like feeling rested too 😉
This post is too cute! It’s really funny that his favorite toys are household items!