At nine months...
She now has four teeth! Two toppies popping through to join the two bottom ones - and she knows how to use them (ouch).
She is crawling like it's her job. She can also get from lying down to sitting easily.
As if the new crawling isn't enough to keep us on our toes, she moved from "crawling" to "crawling-as-a-means-to-getting-to-furniture-to-pull-herself-up-to-standing-and-cruising" in a matter of hours. She keeps trying to stand unsupported, but that still ends with a pretty big boom these days.
She has discovered the stairs...and the cabinets...and the cat food...and every morsel of food or dust-bunny or itty bitty Josie toy. Seriously, do babies have some kind of sixth sense for this kind of thing? Akin to this insane skill, she also has the ninja-like ability to find paper and eat it in exactly the amount of time it takes an adult to blink.
Food is pretty low on Bea's list of priorities. She'd rather do lots of other things than eat - including sleep. She still nurses but it's all business. And it requires a fortress of solitude in most instances. She's on to finger foods now and her favorites are steamed peas, steamed carrots, crackers, yogurt, soft cheeses and cheerios. And she'll never turn down a mum-mum.
Bea & Josie sleep in the same room, and up until the last month, Bea was a through-the-night-without-a-peep sleeper in her crib. She was sick with the stomach bug for a week and now has an upper respiratory infection so has spent much of the last month next to me in our bed nursing (and coughing and throwing up) around the clock. We co-slept with Josie, so it's actually quite nice to have Bea in the bed with me because, especially since I am working full-time, it feels really important to get that extra cuddle time in with her. (And in case you're wondering, that means Lou sleeps most nights with Josie, which neither of them would change either.)
Bea has lots of "words" and regularly uses mama, dada and an emphatic BAA that we think may be her trying to verbalize her own name. We've gotten a couple of DOs out of her which is likely what Josie will be for awhile. She's starting to point and things (like Venus) with AAA and is picking up on some signs. She isn't signing anything herself yet, but if you sign to her she recognizes what you are "saying."
Bea continues to be a totally mellow, super-sweet little one. Her favorite toys are her drum, music table and kazoo. She *loves* water and baths. She spends at least part of every day in the ErgoBaby carrier with either Lou or me.
Josie & Bea are playing more and more together. The biggest problem they have is that Josie wants to always hug and squeeze and smooch her, so we are trying to teach Josie to give Bea some space.
We've given up on getting back to any sort of predictable routine until 2012. We had to get a new nanny after it became clear in many ways that the person we hired was not a good fit for us and we were not a good fit for her. It was a very unfortunate situation and threw things into a tailspin for awhile. We found someone new who is absolutely wonderful and things are starting to feel at peace around here again. All in all, life is pretty good these days!
