Stats: At 8.5 months, she was 16 pounds 13 ounces (30%). She wears both 9 and 12 month clothes, but we'll probably need to put the 9 month clothes up soon.
As of today, which is technically a few days past her 9 month birthday, we noticed her first tooth. When we told Matilda, she made the sweetest face and said, "Oooo.... like a big girl? She's going to talk soon!" It was adorable.
Sleep: Lots of change on this front. We were having a lot of issues with sleep this past month, namely 1) she required so much rocking to get her to sleep (and if she didn't like the rocking chair, like at my parents' house, then you'd have to walk and bounce her) and 2) her night wakings were getting at of hand. Sleep while we were traveling was absolutely terrible. One night I had to sleep with her on me the whole time. When we're home, she's consistently waking up twice, but one of those wakeups was at least an 1.5 hour long. A few times, she was up over 3 hours a time in the middle of the night. Obviously, we knew all of this wasn't sustainable, so once she got over her last cold (about 2 weeks ago), we made up our mind to turn the boat around.
To start, Jason got her on a consistent nap schedule. She's taking two naps. Her morning nap starts between 9:30-10 and her afternoon nap starts between 2:30-3.
Secondly, we started a gradual sleep training regimen, known as fading or camping out, that's gone like this:
- The first two days, we reduced our rocking intensity to just a soft rock.
- The following two days we just sat still with her in our arms while she worked to get herself to sleep.
- The next two days (which were the hardest by far) we put her awake in her crib and we could stand or sit next to it and physically and verbally soothe her as needed.
- Then the next two days, we sat in a chair a bit further away and didn't physically interfere other than helping her from the standing to sitting/ laying position (because she kept getting stuck in the standing position).
- Then we moved the chair to the door for next three days and really tried to have minimal interactions.
- Today is the first day that we've just put her in crib and left the room while she's still awake.
It hasn't been easy, but I think it's gone ok. Hopefully it's worth it in the long run. She's still waking twice a night, but we aren't having to spend hours in there with her.
Eat: Mabel wasn't eating many solids the first half of the month, but we've really kicked it up the second half. She's eating solids 3x a day, and has mostly moved to finger foods. She's had buttered toast, pancakes, chicken, and a variety of fruits and vegetables (including artichoke leaves as seen in the bottom of the post). Her favorite foods so far are probably mango and blueberries. She likes those baby puffs too, but I'd rather her not have too many processed foods a this point.
Play/ Milestones: First off, I kinda love the next picture of the girls. They had built a fort and were playing "camping" nicely together.
Anyways, Mabel continues to work on her mobility. She can crawl around the house to find you if you're in another room. She's also cruising at this point too and has just started some assisted walking with her walker. We're still working on sitting if she's pulled up on something, but I think she's finally getting it (thank goodness... it gets old having to help her down all the time).
Mabel has started to be much more vocal these past couple of weeks. She likes to squeal and babble and make clicking sounds with her tongue. She LOVES throwing her head back and making this huge cheesy grin with a little cheesy laugh. It's adorable.
She's also mastered clapping and loves to clap all the time. She likes to bounce and dance too. We've started reading books at our nap and bedtime routines and she's starting to enjoy that as well. She likes patty-cake and interactive songs like "If You're Happy and You Know It".
Oh, and she is pretty good at her object permanence box. (I have a really cute video of her working with it, but it was too big to upload.)
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