Grace and Glory

My baby girl turned 9 months old last week! I was sick with a fever and flu-ish symptoms all last week, hence the delay in posting, but I wanted to give a snapshot of our girl right now.

Em has been pulling up to stand since right after she turned 8 months old. She needs to have something about 1-3 feet off the ground, like an ottoman or a turned over laundry basket to be consistently successful, but every so often I’ll leave her in her crib to play (now with a lowered mattress!) and come back to find her standing despite how high the edge of the crib is.

Speaking of leaving her to play in her crib, even though she wasn’t technically in a Wonder Week, for a couple of weeks before Emmy turned nine months she was exhibiting all of the signs of a development leap — clingy, cranky, poor sleep, etc. So, her willingness to play happily on her own disappeared for awhile, and just in the last week has it been reemerging. I didn’t realize how much her independent play allowed me to get things done or even just have a little breather. Needless to say, I’m very happy to see the return of Emeline’s self-amusement skills.

My little stinker also decided that naps are for the birds; she’s only taken one nap a day for a few weeks now, which has been more than a little frustrating for me since she is SO CLEARLY tired and yet won’t sleep. Truly, trying to get her to nap lately has made me more frustrated and impatient than anything else thus far in my parenting experience. I’ve been reminding myself that this too shall pass and that, despite her sleep strike, this time is so precious. I can only imagine how much I’m going to miss nursing her to sleep, kissing her fuzzy little head and feeling her warm little body relax into me. Even if that’s happening less often these days with the nap strike, I’m trying to remember to cherish it when it does happen.

Her nighttime schedule (for my own documentation purposes) is as follows: Asleep between 7:30–8:30 (although sometimes as early as 7:00 lately, given the nap strike), often up between 12:00–1:00 to nurse (especially if I worked that evening — she’s definitely hungrier those nights), up between 4:00–6:00 to nurse, and up for the day around 7:30. It’s not super consistent (some nights she’ll skip the midnight feeding and sleep through until 4:00 or 5:00, occasionally she’ll get up one extra time or not go back to sleep after a 6:00-ish feeding), but that’s what most nights looks like. She used to give me much longer stretches, pre-teething, but since she’s still in our room at night and nurses quickly and goes right back to sleep, it really isn’t that big of a deal to me.

Speaking of nursing, it continues to go well and continues to be Emmy’s primary source of nutrition and comfort. She is far more distractible than she used to be, though, so if other people are around she will only nurse if she’s ravenous. She does not appreciate the way the nursing cover blocks her view, so I’ve pretty much given up trying to nurse her in public places. (I’m so grateful that our church has a little cry room off the sanctuary so that I can nurse her and still listen to the service.) Solids are going well, I think. She’s happily eaten everything I’ve given her (which, granted, isn’t a huge variety) except for avocado, and I’m looking forward to branching out now that she’s nine months. (Spoiler alert for the update when she turns 10 months old: We started Cheerios this week and she’s a big fan!) I haven’t tried eggs again, but I plan to in the next week or two. She still has just the two bottom middle teeth, but the drool has been ramping up over the last few days and it looks like a top tooth is about to pop through.

One of her favorite games lately is when we flip her upside down and then bring her back upright. Lather, rinse, repeat. She waits for a second for us to do it again, and if we’re not fast enough she’ll fling her head back and try to flip backwards. I knew I’d love being a mother, but I didn’t anticipate the sheer delight of making my baby laugh. It melts my heart every single time.

She’s been focusing more when we read to her; for awhile she was too busy trying to turn the pages to wait for me to read the text. She still likes to try to turn the pages, but she’ll stop and stare at the pictures and listen to me read more patiently than a month or two ago.

Right after I posted last month that Em quit saying, “Bababa!” she started saying it again! Yay! She’s also branching out into other consonants, and her newest favorite phrase is “Yayayayaya” said very softly.

In the last month I took Emmy to the pediatrician for the first time for an appointment other than a well baby check-up because her eczema was really flaring up. As much as I hate that Emmy got my super sensitive skin, I am profoundly and deeply grateful that a) we made it to 8+ months without even a phone call to the pedi and b) when we did go in it was for something not at all scary. I am definitely counting my blessings in terms of Emeline’s health. She’s had a couple of colds, but never has she been in any respiratory distress or had a fever. She continues to grow and thrive (9 month stats: 22 lbs 4 oz and 29.25 inches), and I am so thankful.

Emeline turned 8 months old on Saturday! In the six weeks or so since I last posted, there’s been a huge change in her physical mobility. She is crawling all over the place! She’s been able to stay more or less upright for awhile if we put her in the sitting position (and had no problems in her IKEA high chair, for instance), but in the last couple of weeks she’s become much more stable. Just in time for her 8 month birthday she figured out how to push herself from her hands and knees to a sitting position; it surprises me every time I turn around and see her sitting up! Now she’s working on standing; she can’t do it yet without some help, but she’s trying.

She no longer says “babababa!”, and that breaks my heart a little bit. (Look at this video my Mom and Dad took of her back in January, and tell me if you blame me. I really miss it! Also, my apologies for not having the video embedded; WordPress and I are fighting tonight.) Anyway, despite the lack of “baba”, Emmy still loves to talk and she’s back to blowing raspberries (something she did a lot around 4 or 5 months and then quit doing).

Emmy got her first tooth about a week before she turned 7 months (lower middle on her left), and the second tooth followed a couple of weeks later (lower middle on her right). Both teeth resulted in a couple of nights of poor sleep. Normally Emeline will wake up and make little snuffly “I’m looking for something to eat” noises, but she doesn’t cry unless I take too long to respond. With her little teeth, though, she would wake up wailing. Thankfully, it was only for a couple of nights per tooth.

Solids have been going fairly well. For now,  we view food as just practice and for fun, so it’s nice to not have to worry about how much she eats or from what food groups. Most days she eats rice or oatmeal baby cereal (for the added iron) plus one other item, such as broccoli or carrots or bananas. She loves feeding herself and has gotten adept at spitting out bites she takes that are too big. She’s also getting pretty good at drinking water from a straw cup. Amusingly, her favorite part about mealtime seems to be the cleaning up; she laughs and laughs when I wash her face and hands.

Emmy tried the yolk from a hard boiled egg for the first time this weekend. She liked it, but later that day I noticed she had eczema all over her arms. She’s had eczema before, but never that much; I’m trying not to worry about if an egg allergy is in her future. For now we certainly won’t be giving her any more egg, and I’ll check with our pediatrician at Em’s 9 month appointment to see how I should proceed with when and how to offer her egg again.

Speaking of solids, since we’ve started them I have not been quite as much of a fan of cloth diapers. (Big surprise, right?) This week I decided that even if we use cloth part-time from here on out, we’ll have gotten our money’s worth out of them. So, I got a big package of disposable diapers (we like Seventh Generation), and the plan is to use cloth diapers until I think it’s about when she’ll have a dirty diaper, and then use disposables until said dirty diaper materializes. We’ve been using this strategy for a few days now, and I’m really happy with it. I’ve been erring on the side of using more disposables, so she’s probably only in cloth about half of the time. Once Emeline is eating more solids and her stools are more formed (and therefore easier to get off with the diaper sprayer) we may go back to all cloth all of the time, but for now I’m really happy with this compromise. I’d still highly recommend cloth to anyone interested, and even if we switched to full-time disposables (which we don’t plan on), I’d still be glad we got our cloth diapers.

Most days Emmy will play well independently for half hour increments or so, which helps us tremendously in terms of productivity and needed down time. She loves her jumperoo (which, incidentally, we got for a much better price than what it’s currently selling for on Amazon) and it’s the one place she’ll fall asleep while playing.

She also loves books (although if she plays with books without a pacifier in her mouth she’s apt to eat the book). She has been discovering the joys of making noise — banging hard toys on her high chair tray, or two hard toys together, or just her own screeching. Her favorite toy, by far, is Mama’s iPhone (for some reason Daddy’s doesn’t hold the same appeal, we think because his does not have a bright pink bumper). She LOVES seeing herself on the camera screen. If I take it (or any other desired object away), Em is apt to let out a high pitched shriek that’s like nails on a chalkboard. Thankfully, she is easily distracted, so the shrieking doesn’t last long.

She is very attached to her pacifier (and, in fact, likes to have two pacifiers, one for her mouth and one to hold on to), to the point where I’m already dreading weaning her off of them. Kevin and I talked about trying to wean her off of it now, but we both decided that we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot if we did so. Her pacifier is one of three things that consistently soothe her. The other two things that soothe her are nursing and being bounced up and down; if we take the pacifier away, the only thing Kevin has to work with when I’m at the hospital is bouncing her, which would get rather exhausting. So, for now the pacifier stays.

Kevin and I are daily in awe of our little girl, and we’re so thankful that God has given her to us. Her babyhood is speeding by, and I so wish I could bottle these days up to pull out when she’s older. I know in 5, 10, and 50 years from now, I’m going to yearn for the days of holding this little lamb close.

I missed doing a six-month update on Emmy, but instead of waiting until she’s seven months old, I thought I’d sneak in an update now.

I was just rereading the update from when she was five months, and I can’t get over the change in her physical mobility. Shortly after that post she turned into our little tumbleweed baby; she started rolling to get to where she wanted to be, and she’d cross entire rooms that way. Right about when she turned six months old she started getting up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. She still isn’t crawling, although she’s staying up on her hands and knees for longer and longer periods of time and she does manage to scoot backwards sometimes.

Emmy is a little stingier with smiles for people she doesn’t know well; she seems to be getting a little wary of strangers, although she still will let other people hold her. She’s usually happy to play on a quilt on the floor or in her crib (which we use as a playpen, essentially, since she’s still sleeping in a cosleeper in Kevin’s and my room) while I do other things, but there have been a few instances lately of her crying when Kevin or I go out of her sight. I’m thinking that separation anxiety is coming ’round the bend soon enough.

Several days ago she started saying “ba!” and has been saying it non-stop ever since. (Unless, of course, we’re doing FaceTime with family in Michigan, in which case she is silent as a mouse.) I never imagined that one little syllable could be said with so many different intonations and inflections! Kevin and I love listening to her so much, and she’s absolutely thrilled when we say “ba ba ba!” back to her. She’s also said “ma”, but only very sporadically, and definitely not with any sort of meaning behind it (i.e. she’s not trying to say “mama”).

We’ve sort of started with solids, although it’s been rather half-hearted. I’ve decided to mostly skip purees, although our pediatrician wants me to at least feed her cereal since it’s iron fortified. Her first food was steamed green beans on Christmas Day, and she seemed to like it. Next up was avocado, which she did not seem to enjoy as much as the green beans but was interested enough. The third time we tried avocado she gagged and projectile vomited, so we’ve moved on to other things. Yesterday she tried steamed broccoli and seemed to like it. Today I let her lick and gnaw on a peeled wedge of apple, and even though she didn’t actually eat any of it she seemed to really enjoy it. Throw in a handful of times trying rice cereal (the first time was a miserable failure, but since then I’ve made it thinner and she’s done okay) and you have the entirety of Emeline’s experience with solids. I’m glad that all she really needs the first year is breast milk, because it’s nice to know that we have awhile before it matters if she’s eating solids.

She had her first cold a few weeks ago, and she handled it pretty well. She definitely didn’t sleep as well usual and wasn’t a huge fan of getting her nose sucked out, but overall the cold seemed pretty mild. She was kind enough to share it with me, and it was NOT a mild cold for me, so I’m grateful that she wasn’t very sick. And I also have no idea how we avoided an ear infection, but at her six-month appointment then next week her doctor said her ears looked beautiful.

She’s mostly in size 12 month clothes now, although I can still fit her into a few 9 month things.

She hasn’t been sleeping as well as she used to; it’s harder to get her down for naps and at night, especially for Kevin. I’m not sure if it’s a developmental phase or if she’s having a hard time with me being at work or a combination of both, but I am now in possession of “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” and plan on reading it this week. When she won’t nap for Kevin it can result in hours of screaming and fussing, and that absolutely breaks my heart. So, it’s time to figure out how to help her sleep when she can’t nurse herself to sleep.

On a happier note, Emeline loved her first Christmas, in particular the lights on the tree and ripping wrapping paper off of gifts. I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of her from Christmas Day.

Today was my last day of maternity leave. What a beautiful season this has been, being at home with my baby girl! I’m so very sad that this time is ending, but I’m trusting that God will give our family the grace we need as we transition into this next season.

Unfortunately, when I leave for work tomorrow, I’ll be leaving a house behind that is an absolute disaster. Kevin has been crazy busy the last couple of weeks with school so he hasn’t been cleaning, and I haven’t had it in me to spend time cleaning when I could be snuggling my little girl while she naps. When I was little my mom had a counted cross stitch with a poem that I’ve taken as my motto:

Cleaning and dusting can wait ’til tomorrow
For babies grow up we’ve learned to our sorrow
So quiet down cobwebs and dust go to sleep
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep

Does it drive me a little crazy to have a messy house? Yes. But I don’t regret for a second all of the time I’ve spent rocking and snuggling Emeline. What precious, precious time that I’ll never have back!

I’m off to pump and get things in order for tomorrow morning. Prayers definitely are appreciated!

(Granted, she’s still super wobbly and tumbles over the second she reaches for something, but still!)