Better Out Than In...

9 whole months!  Evelynn has now been outside longer than she was in and just keeps on growing even though we keep telling her to stop or at least slow down a little. She doesn't have to go to the doctor for a well exam until her first birthday so all our measurements are purely unscientific. But according to our scale she weighs in at 20 pounds and is 28.5 inches tall.  That's the 75th and 87th percentiles respectively.  She now has 5 teeth, two on the top and 3 on the bottom. She can crawl with the best of them; she cruises around holding on to the furniture with ease and can even stand unsupported for as long as she wants. She can walk holding on to your fingers. She can even do it one handed, although she usually fusses and prefers two hands. She can clap, usually discriminately and she can understand a few things we say.

She knows "No" and the different tones of voice it comes in. If you use the very serious tone she usually stops immediately and looks at you. Then she does it again. And, while everyone tells me she's too young for time out, I believe she's not too young to start learning boundaries. We've had an issue lately when she decided that my mohogany end tables were chew toys. Despite being told no, moved away and prevented from biting them she repeatedly did it anyway. So, I decided she needed a baby sized time out. I told her "No", moved her away from the table and then held her in the corner facing the wall and counted to 10.  Then I hugged her, explained that she had to go to time out because she chewed the table when I told her not to, told her I still loved her and took her to her toys to play. We had to do it several times and occasionally she was enjoying herself after 10 seconds so we stayed 20.  And, you know what?  She hasn't done it for the past few days! Is it because of the time outs? Is it because the 5th tooth came in? We don't know, but I still contend 10-20 seconds of time out won't hurt her and maybe, just maybe, she's catching on. She's a smart cookie after all.

Speaking of cookies, Evie loves them.  We try really hard not to give her anything with added sugar, high fructose corn syrup or salt but on rare occasions she's had a taste or two. Her diet currently is: Fruit, Cereal and plain yogurt mixed together for breakfast, Meat and veggies for lunch with fruit if she is still hungry, Meat and veggies for dinner with fruit if she's still hungry and if she finishes all that she can have one organic cinnamon graham cookie to chew on.  Evelynn enjoys snacks of rice puffies, Cheerios and because I was hoping to get her to feed herself a little more baby Cheetos.  The rice puffies are so small that she can pick them up but then doesn't realize she has to let go when she puts them in her mouth. The Cheetos are big enough that she can hold on to them and still chew on them. She still refuses most things I cook for her, preferring jars of yuck. But she will eat rice, roasted veggies, edamame, spinach/potato soup, yogurt and cottage cheese. I've heard so many people with babies that can't have dairy I was a bit scared to give it to her. But all my reading said at 9 months she could start to have some cheese and yogurt, so we started small. She loved the yogurt and I think the probiotics in it really helped her. Since she started eating it most days we've had a significant reduction in spit up. Score!  In addition to her solid (ish) meals, Evelynn also has breastmilk and formula about 4 times per day.

Evelynn is generally a very happy baby but she does get separation anxiety, although that is getting better. It usually flares up when she's tired. She also has a little bit of stranger anxiety, so visitors shouldn't take it personally. It usually takes her about 30 minutes to an hour to really warm up to someone new or that she hasn't seen in a while.

She's very independent and we can sit her in the floor with her toys and she will play with them for a long time by herself whether you are sitting there or not. Of course she LOVES to play with Mommy and Daddy. Physical games like "riding the horsey" (bouncing on your foot or knee), jumping on the bed, "flying", peek-a-boo and tickles are her favorites.  She's very curious and loves to explore the house. The kitchen and laundry rooms are now gated off and the doors to the bedrooms and guest bathroom stay closed almost all the time now. She is particularly enchanted with the fireplace. It's a good thing it doesn't open because she loves to stand by it and bang on the glass with her hand or a toy. Her favorite toys right now are her ball popper, silly town and her laugh and learn house. But she still plays with her Exersaucer (we've converted it into a play table) and stuffed animals of all kinds, though Christmas Dolly remains a favorite. While she's never been big on pacifiers she does enjoy chewing on them so they are scattered around the house.  Since she is the only child in the family we've started taking her to Toddler Time at least once a week. There she gets to play with other children around her age and older. She has a couple little friends and they share toys nicely.  But it usually takes some time for Evelynn to get accustomed to her surroundings and interact with others. She is still pretty independent and is fine playing by herself if none of the other kids come up to her. She seems to look at them with the same curiosity she shows the cats. She even tried to pet one little boy's hair.

Speaking of the cats, She LOVES them.  When she catches sight of one of the kitties she lets out a squeal of delight (to the kitties I think it evokes terror).  Trevi usually just runs away but Anna seems to enjoy the attention to a point. Evelynn will start out patting Anna but invariably starts to hit and pull out fistfuls of fur. Anna meows and turns but rarely runs away, not that she could get very far with Evie holding her tail. She has nipped at Evelynn once or twice and scared her but didn't break the skin and Evelynn didn't learn her lesson and went right back to pulling fur so we figure, she wasn't hurt and she'll learn eventually.

In addition to the teething challenges, lately the kid who HATED to be on her tummy for her first 5 months of life, now HATES to be on her back.  Changing a diaper on a kid who's only goal is to roll over and stand up is not easy and has taken both of us on more than on occasion. We were having trouble getting her to bed at night but we seem to have mitigated that by changing our routine. I dropped her evening nap and started keeping her up 3-4 hours between naps a few weeks ago. That helped considerably. Then we started watching the clock and making sure dinner and bedtime were at the same time every night. Dinner at 5:30 then at 7:00 Bath, Jammies, Story, Milk and she's been in bed asleep by 8:00 almost every night - even when my mom came to visit and put her to bed while we went to the movies. She seems to have gotten over the waking up and standing up in bed in the middle of the night thing and is back to sleeping through the night almost every night. Asleep by 8:00PM usually means awake around 7:00AM and that's fine by me.

We still don't have any real words. She babbles a lot but usually the same sounds over and over. We hear a lot of "Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah" and "EEEEEEEEE!!".  We are still working on sign language but Evelynn has yet to do a sign beyond clapping.

The next milestones we are on the lookout for are: Waving Bye-bye, Walking, and her first word.

We had Evelynn's 9 month portraits taken last week and they are WONDERFUL as usual. Hopefully the studio will have a slideshow up some time in the next week so I can share those pictures too.