Calendar Girl - Nine Months

I took these pictures almost three weeks ago!  Sigh.  One day, one day I will post these things on time!  Maybe.  

The biggest, most exciting thing to happen in Ruby's ninth month?  Teeth!  She got her first tooth just a few days into the month, and about a week and a half later, the second one popped through.  Unfortunately, along with the teeth, came the worst diaper rash ever.  Well, it might be due to teeth.  Either that or she is allergic to spinach (I hope not), but every time she's eaten spinach, she's also gotten a killer rash and a tooth.  Who knows?

Whoooooaaaa!  Look at my chompies!

Her love of food this month, was stronger than ever.  She'll even eat avocados now!  She got super interested in finger foods, which means she'll pretty much try anything.  We joke that she is part beagle, because she's a bottomless pit!  She's now doing breakfast and dinner every day.  If you don't put the food on her tray fast enough, she pounds on it with her hand, or points fervently like, "Hello!  Put the food here, now!".  Charming.  We decided to teach her the sign for "more" so that she could make her demands a little more politely, and now she "mores" constantly for everything.

Still no crawling, but still lots of "I'm kind of thinking about crawling" moments.  Many a faceplant happens on our bed.  Thankfully, she's not brave enough to try that out on the wood floor or anything.  Also, like last month, she is super interested in play and she now loves to "share" her toys.  She pretty much insists that we "eat" her blocks or rattles or whatever else she offers to us, and if you pretend to do it, she totally cracks up.  She tries to share her toys with Braidy too, which I think is just so so cute!  Also, she loves when we make stuffed animals "talk" to her with disguised voices, and really gets a kick out of me lowing my voice to sing the Thrift Shop song (which I guess would be pretty funny, as I have an unfortunately childish sounding voice).

Nursing thankfully got back to normal this month.  Maybe she just really needed to get those teeth out, or maybe it's because we're done with the swaddle (and never going back).  Whatever it is, baby girl still loooooves to nurse.  I doubt I'll ever be able to wean her.  And sleep/naps?  It's still not what it once was.  But it's getting a little better.

Her favorite past time is riding in shopping carts (especially at Trader Joe's).  She can kind of wave now, so she likes to charm the pants off of everyone in any store by waving and "talking" to them.  I counted no less than 15 people who talked to us because of her the last time we were grocery shopping.  I guess they just can't help themselves with this cuteness!

Since we had a doctor's appointment this month, we actually got to see if this little miss did any growing.  I was pretty anxious about it, after such little growth the last time, but baby girl gained three and a half pounds!  So at nine months, she was clocking in at a whopping 15lbs. 11oz.  Ok, so that's still pretty petite, but awesome for her!  She gained an inch and a half in length, putting her at 26.75", and her head got another inch bigger around too (which I could tell because some of her headbands are getting tight!).  Way to grow, girl.  I just finally packed away most of her 6 month clothes, which I feel like I just about got six months of use out of!  Looking in that bin is so weird - there's dresses from summer, a Halloween shirt, her Christmas jammies...  It's a smattering of seasons.  All of the fun clothes start at toddler sizes, though, so I am excited about her being able to start to fit into 12mo stuff (she can wear a little bit of it, depending on brand)!

Even though some days I feel like I cannot figure out what in the world she wants (I don't think she even knows), and I would do just about anything for some more sleep, I could also just about explode with love for this little girl!