Baby & Body: 9/10 month updates

Ignoring my now typical tardiness, I believe we left off with the rapid succession of sitting up to army crawling to proper crawling and lastly to pulling up to standing, back in late December and early January. Looking back at texts and pictures to confirm the timeline (because I seemingly can’t cast my mind back a mere 6 weeks) it seems that by mid January, standing had become the norm along with cruising the furniture. By far, her favourite pastime in this era is cruising the coffee tables, couches and ottoman, looking for remotes, iPads, game controllers, Kindles and iPhones. If I unleashed her in a Radio Shack she’d be happy for days. Actual toys? For suckers. Books, at least, have retained their appeal and she loves pulling them all off the shelves and flipping through them on her own. It is one of my favourite sights.

Although everything I’ve read suggests that, at this age, baby babble is just that – phonetic babble that is not intentional language or use of words – I beg to differ. This is the month she started using mom (momomomom) and dad (dadadadada) in the proper contexts and specifically directed at us. Also, more rarely, hihihihi, byebyebye, kitty and cup. She made the meanings very clear by complementing the words with her other new obsession: pointing. She used this funny crooked pointer finger – never quite straight, but accusatory nonetheless. She particularly enjoyed when we would reach out and touch our finger to hers, E.T style. Moving closer to the 10 month mark, she started pointing at objects saying, “that?!” as in, asking us what the object is called. And trust me, she wants to know what EVERYTHING is called. All day long. That is a cat. That is a doorknob, that is a carbon monoxide detector, that is a scratch on the coffee table, that is the metal thingy that the door knob latches into. That is mommy’s wine bottle.

We enrolled in another session of Rhyme & Reason this month in which she actually fell into the proper age group (8 to 18 months) whereas last time she was added to the group at just 5 months old due to low enrollment in her own age category. Of course, this was far less “successful” than the first time around when she was totally engrossed in the songs, stories and hand motions. This time, she just wanted to roam, manhandle other babies and get into everything. At any rate, she left each class happy and exhausted, so it has to get chalked up as a win, even if I largely felt a bit silly sitting in a circle, clapping and bouncing by myself

A sad thing about her new inability to stay still was that around the second week of January we had to cut out letting her come sleep in our bed after her first early morning feeding. She was just too wiggly and wily and wouldn’t settle back down with us. She was constantly scaling our bodies and trying to hurl herself headfirst off the bed, instead of drifting off holding our hands. Sadly, I had to start putting her back in her own crib for an hour or two more of solo sleep. Otherwise, sleep was smooth and naptimes really stabilized with a 10 or 10:30 morning nap and a 2:30 or 3 afternoon nap.

And then we went to Mexico. We left at the very end of January when she was just over 9 months and the flight took a little more work than it used to to keep her happy and quiet. She just wants to stand and crawl, which makes it feel a bit like a 5 hour alligator wrestling match with all the thrashing, grabbing and splashing (of sippy cups). Overall though, she did quite well and received many compliments on her good behaviour from relieved fellow travelers.

Puerto Vallarta really agreed with her, even though it was at times a bit of a pain in the ass for us (narrow, cobblestone roads; a lack of serviceable highchairs). She loved the swimming pools and the hot tub (it was a cool one), especially with the inflatable duck floaty that grandma and grandpa picked up for her. The mere sight of Ducky resulted in so much flailing and screaming that we had to strategically hide it and carry it around out of her sight so she didn’t lose her mind if we weren’t immediately headed to the pool. She loved Mexican food including chorizo tacos, queso, guacamole, and could absolutely pack away the refried beans. She always enjoys restaurants and people-watching so the whole cadence of our aimless days spent wandering around, snacking, drinking and sightseeing suited her perfectly. It didn’t hurt that she was being squeezed, cooed at and fawned over everywhere we went by all the friendly old ladies and young gay men (and a few young gay men in friendly old lady drag.) As much fun as she had, she also slept exceptionally well, but a bit un predictably. With extra long morning and afternoon naps and solid long nights. I was often finding myself waking up significantly before her, for maybe the first time ever, which was a nice feeling to be able to wake up on my own without having to bolt right out of bed and get to work.

There were a few lows among all these highs. She was sick a couple of times, with a minor cold the first couple days of our trip that didn’t seem to faze her and then a more chesty, rattly cough the last couple days that really knocked her out for an entire day that she spent the vast majority of napping. Luckily the gym had a wet sauna so we went there pre-bed and got a lot of…stuff…out of her. That cough went away and then about a week after we got home it came back. Sick babies suck because there’s nothing you can really give them to feel better, other than a humidifier and snuggles. The only upside to come out of this last round of sickness was the one morning when Andrew didn’t have the heart to put her back in her crib and she ended up being calm (weak, haha) enough to come sleep in our bed for a couple hours.

More to come in separate posts about feeding, Mr. T, and another random rant. Soon. For reals.