9 months

Mia turns 9 months on Saturday. This is totally crazy to me. My helpless little newborn has turned into this crawling, adventurous, sweet and playful little person for whom I am starting to plan a first birthday. I am hoping that the weather is warm enough by then for us to have a little shindig by our apartment’s pool (or, even better, at boss’ pool). Something simple with cake, ice cream, hot dogs and burgers.

Mia’s 9 month well visit is next Monday, so I don’t have any height/weight stats just yet, but I have a feeling we are going to be holding pretty steady at the 25^th percentile mark. Miss Mia is still petite, still fitting into many of her 6 month onesies, but definitely needing the 6-9 month pants or her shins show. She has also outgrown all of her 6 month sleepers, but still fits perfectly in 9 month and the old navy 6-12 month sizes. She is not yet close to outgrowing anything in a 6-9 month size, so we’re starting to stock up on only summer 12 month clothes.

She has been crawling quickly and swiftly for about three weeks. She’s been pulling up on the side of her crib and the coffee table and my leg and door frames and just about everything else she can hang on to for over a month now. She’s starting to “cruise” along furniture, but mostly, she just stands and bounces. She vocalizes “Mamama” and “Papapa” and B and I pretend she’s talking about us, but I’m pretty sure we’re deluding ourselves.

She still has zero teeth, but I’ve started feeding her bits of soft fruits and vegetables, which she picks up readily between her fingers and attempts to put into her mouth. I haven’t tried Cheerios or anything harder since she doesn’t have anything to chew it with, but I guess that’s a question for the pediatrician next week.

At nine months, our biggest challenge is, by far, sleeping. She screams as soon as she is put down. We’ve tried letting her fall asleep in our arms, and then putting her down, but she’ll wake up as soon as her back hits the mattress. This goes for both naps and night time.  We’ve tried putting her down when she’s just about to fall asleep, but same deal. For the past 4 days, I’ve resorted to ferberizing her and letting her scream for up to 10 minutes to see if she’ll self-soothe. It worked the first couple of times, actually. She screamed for exactly 9 minutes and then fell asleep, and the following nap it was down to 3 minutes, and night time about 5. But the second day, it was as if she knew what was coming, and screamed for over 10 minutes, so one of us would come in for a snuggle. We kept trying until she cried for less than 10 minutes and finally fell asleep. I’m about ready to give up on this whole “cry it out” method and move on to the Barnes and Noble baby section. With rare exceptions, naps no longer last more than 20 minues. Perhaps this is the 8 month sleep regression, but I think it mostly has to do with her being so much more mobile than ever before, so that as soon as she stirs, she pulls herself right up on the side of the crib and wants! to! have! fun! Let’s not even talk about sleeping through the night, because we’re not even close on that front.

As for me, 9 months later, I’m still 14 lbs above my pre-pregnancy weight. But, I feel better. I’ve been consistently working out every other day since my mom left about three weeks ago. My eating isn’t quite as disciplined as I would like, but, one thing at a time. My goal had been to lose my 14 lbs by the time my friend’s bachelorette party in LA rolled around, but now that it’s 3 weeks away, I’m thinking that’s not going to happen. It’s going to suck to be the only person there who has been through pregnancy and child birth.