Molly - 9 months

Lots to report this month!

Molly wasn't exactly an early crawler (she started crawling last month), but her motor development sure took off from there!  Very quickly after she figured out crawling (maybe 2 weeks later?) she was pulling up to standing.  Now she's cruising side-to-side along the furniture, can let go and stand on her own for a few moments at a time (and it seems her balance and duration improves every day), and she's walking behind things like a pro.  Slow down, Little Miss!  I'm interested to see when she starts walking.

2nd time she ever pulled herself to standing

She has two teeth!  The first one popped through just a day or two after she hit 9-months-old and the second one quickly followed.  I think she's working on her top teeth now.

You can see her two little teeth poking out on the bottom.  So cute!

She's still waking overnight, but after a rough period with multiple wake ups she's up more like once a night now.  Sometimes twice.

Naps... ugh.  Recently she's hit a point where our old schedule isn't working too well.  She's ready for longer awake periods between naps and it's becoming increasingly hard to balance her sleep needs with a working schedule for the other things we have going on (like Jack's preschool pick up and drop off).  This is a pretty new development so we're currently working on figuring out a new routine.  This has definitely been a point of stress for me this month as I feel like every day I'm working hard to try to balance everything and it's not easy right now.  I'm really looking forward to when she drops to one nap a day.  It will certainly simplify things!

Molly is an eater!  She's taking about 6 ounces at a time in her bottles (still on the lower end of normal), but she loves real food.  She'll eat anything you put in front of her!  She's doing great with her pincer grasp so we're doing a mix of finger foods and bigger chunks like we've done in the past.  It's actually to the point where the finger foods are pretty handy (less messy, easier for her to eat), but we still incorporate the bigger chunks as well because I think it's good for her to get continued practice with biting off the appropriate chunks of food and that sort of thing.

Sharing some of her peas with cousin Rilynn at Ri's 1st birthday party!

Right now she's to the point where she's pretty much just eating what we eat, which is SO awesome and stress-free.  She hasn't refused anything so far and has tasted a wide variety of foods.  She likes flavorful things and interestingly enough she seems to really love meat.  This is surprising to me as I'm not a huge meat-lover and Jack eats very little meat.  Miss Molly is anything but picky with food right now.  I'm really hoping this trend continues!

Molly is a huge copy-cat right now. She loves to try to mimic sounds and inflections as well as things like sticking her tongue out, clicking her tongue, smacking her lips, waving, etc.  She's so happy if someone will just sit and blow raspberries back and forth with her!  She's also babbling lots of new sounds and loves to just chatter away.

She also has to be right in the middle of everything and likes to jump right in and wrestle around with Jack.  Jack is definitely struggling as Molly gets more and more mobile.  She wants to play with everything he's playing with and it's a difficult adjustment for him after 3 1/2 years of being left alone to do what he wants.  This is definitely going to be an ongoing process of adjustment, but he is starting to learn.  Sometimes he takes things back to his room to play (I always keep Molly out of there so he can have some private space) and some things he doesn't take out unless Molly is sleeping.

Jack sometimes tries to blockade Molly by setting up a makeshift fence, haha!  She doesn't appreciate it a bit.

9-month stats:

Length: 27 1/2 inches (25th percentile)

Weight: 21 lbs 6 oz (75th percentile)

Head Circumference: 18 inches (90th percentile)