9 Months Old

I'm finally getting a chance to write about Julianna turning 9 months old, which was 2 wks ago :). She is such a precious, little girl and I love her so much!!

Her 9 mo check-up was over a month ago, so I'm not exactly sure about her measurements. At her appt. 2 wks ago for her ear infections she weighed 17 lbs. 12 oz. She was 50th percentile for weight and 75th for height at that time.



She's growing and changing so much! Most notably, she's crawling!! She pulls up on everything that she can and she can even stand independently, for a few seconds.





She loves to dance, dance, dance, and can even do so on command! She dances to any tune that she hears. Today, she danced to the rhythm of the squeaky wheel on our grocery cart! Maybe she'll be the one person in our family to have some rhythm.





She's eating all kinds of finger foods and prefers to feed herself, over any mush that I present to her on a spoon! She hasn't turned down a finger food yet. Here are some of the ones that we have tried: Cheerios, cooked apples, pears, bananas, kiwi, avocado, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, toast, cheese, cottage cheese,macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs and crackers.


She has mastered her sippy cup! These Nuby cups are great transition cups, BTW, with their soft, pliable nipple. But they will leak if laying down, so beware.

She's all about toys now and just wants to play, play, play. I think that she would forget to eat if I didn't take her away from the toys. Lately it has been hard to get her to nurse for her wanting to get down and play.


It is fun to see her and Chase play together....although we still have some kinks to work out. The bathtub is a fun time for them, and usually little to no crying, so that's good!





"Check" for: Protests to have object taken away. Poor second child! :)

She started showing some separation anxiety at Thanksgiving and at church on Sunday. They had to come and get me out of the service for the first time. Now with Chase, they had to do this every Sunday, so I'm used to it.



She's starting to understand "no" and even got her first spanking last week for continuously turning over on the changing table while I was trying to put diaper cream on her. That drives me crazy!! But let me tell you that she hasn't tried it once since then. (Sorry if that offends any of you "non-spankers" out there, but we spank, sparingly, in this house.)



Her communication is coming along, which excites me, as you know. I can tell what she wants now by her vocalizations and we are working hard right now on using signs. I used signs with Chase and he used them extensively until he had the communication skills to replace the signs with words. He also has very high language skills now and I have to think that the two are related. Julianna has imitated the sign for "more" and "all done" so far and made the /m/ sound for "more". So her language skills are emerging.

Her comprehension skills are emerging as well. She can identify "Momma", "Dadda" and "Bubba" with eye gaze.



Her sleeping patterns have just now gotten back to "normal" since her ear infections. She still goes to bed at 7pm (or 5pm, like tonight) and sleeps until 7 or 8 am. She's been taking 3 -4 naps a day lately. They are usually 1 -11/2 hrs each. She must be having a growth spurt. She slept through dinner tonight and couple of nights ago too!

We love our little girl and she's going to be very well protected, having a good, big brother to watch over her...and her Daddy of course! We love you Julianna!