William at 9 Months

As of this morning, William weighs 18lbs 7.4 oz, is 28 1/2" long and has a head circumference of 17 3/4". I had anticipated that this month would be one of big changes: crawling, speaking and perhaps even walking along furniture. None of that happened. Instead, this month has been marked with small, but steady changes and developments. For example, William can now pick up puffs between his forefinger and thumb and feed himself. He can also grab his own sippy cup, bring it to his mouth and drink out of a straw. In fact, if you try to help him with it, he has a little fit just like a toddler! This increased dexterity has made play time easier as well as meal time. Usually I start meals with a few ounces of purees, just to fill him up, and then give him various finger foods just for fun, so that he can practice self feeding. We have done potato wedges, bell pepper strips, berries, puffs, carrot sticks, cheese, rice crackers, apples wedges, orange wedges, snap peas, and much more. He definitely has preferences in taste and texture, but I find the more times I offer something, the more open to it he becomes.


He is developing more curiosity about the world lately as well. He loves to lift and open and look underneath and behind things. He has figured out how to open cabinets and will open and close them repeatedly, as well as check out what is contained within them. It might be time to install cabinet locks! He flips boxes over to see what is underneath them, opens and closes lids on pots and pans, empties boxes of their contents, and flips pages in books. He also has book preferences. Before bed, I allow him to pick out a book (he whaps whichever one he wants to read) and he is very interested in flipping the pages and exploring what is on each page before moving on to the next. I hope that this is a sign of a future book worm!

As far as talking goes, though he isn't any more vocal than before (he still babbles various consonants . . . not ever 'mama' or 'dada' though! Grrr!), he is learning how to make other types of noises. Gurgling, shrieks, sticking his tongue out and blowing, pursing his lips and blowing and excited squeals are all part of the new repertoire. It is fun to get a group of similarly aged babies together, and hear all the funny sounds they make. Its like being in the jungle and hearing all of the jungle animals making their raucous din!



Though the extent of William's mobility is rolling, there are signs that he will soon be doing a whole lot more. He can stand supported for quite a while, and has just learned how to pull himself up by grabbing onto my fingers. Furniture is next I'm sure. He will also dive from a sitting position, onto his tummy, then roll to whatever it is he want to get. Just in the past day or so, he has also learned how to use his feet to inch himself forward on his tummy. It is this recent movement that resulted in his first big injury last week. I was gardening in the front, and sat him next to me on the sidewalk. I thought he would sit quietly and play with the toy that I gave him. I turned my back to grab a weed and in split second, I head a scream. I turned to find him face down in the concrete. Apparently he had dove from sitting, onto his tummy, and face planted into the cement in the process. The poor guy had quite the road rash. I felt so bad! He screamed the whole time I was cleaning the wound of rocks and debris. Luckily he quickly calmed down, and the wound healed very rapidly. Baby skin is miraculous!


The final change in William's behavior is related to sleep. Both naps and nighttime sleep have changed for the better recently, and I couldn't be happier. Last month we shifted from three naps down to two, with wonderful results.Well those results have not only continued, but have improved further! He is now regularly taking two, 2 hour naps! They used to be one hour and gradually lengthened until they were 2. Now, not every nap lasts that long, but it is certainly not unusual and its to the point where I am surprised (and disappointed) if he awakes before then.

The change in night time sleep was more minor, but a victory nonetheless. Every night, since he was about 6 months old, I have given him a 'dream feed.' That is, I would go back into his room at 10pm (right before I went to sleep) and feed him more milk from the bottle. Sometimes he would take 1-2 ounces, and sometimes he'd take another 5-6 ounces. It was a great way to reduce my tremendous oversupply of frozen milk, and it helped him sleep through the night. I found that if I forgot to give him this feed, he was bound to wake up at least once in the night. He recently went through a growth spurt though, and blew through that frozen milk stash in record time. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 60+, 7-10 ounce bags of milk, and now I am down to about 15! He was drinking at least 18 ounces a night, and I can only pump 7 ounces every day. So with my frozen stash rapidly dwindling, I needed to stop this dream feed (and make him learn to sleep through the night without it). To do this I began feeding him more solids during the day (and solids that had more protein in it) in the form of larger, and more frequent meals (3 or 4 feedings a day instead of 2). Just two weeks ago I gave him the last dream feed, and he hasn't woken up in the middle of the night once! And my stash is finally safe until the next growth spurt :)

Even though I was initially disappointed that Will did not make bigger strides this month, I was ultimately relieved. The prideful part of me wants him to be so advanced, but the practical part of me wants him to stay a baby as long as possible (so much easier than a walking, talking kid!). He will be doing all kinds of new and advanced things before I know it. They are only babies for such a short time. I am doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts!