Claire at Nine Months

Claire is now 9 months old, and she has really blossomed in the last several weeks! Her personality is starting to come out, and she's gotten much more interactive and imitative recently.

Eating
Think a 24-pound 9-month-old should have no trouble eating? Think again. Just as it took Claire some time to get used to the idea of pureed baby food, now we're struggling to get her accustomed to eating things that aren't mushed beyond recognition. I've tried puffs, several varieties of crackers, biter biscuits, little bits of bread ... Claire wants no part of any of it. Once again, she seems reluctant to move to the next level. I think she's content to eat her baby food and doesn't understand why I'm pushing yet another new thing on her. When I forcibly shove something into her mouth, she will reluctantly chew it (as much as a person with no teeth can chew), but she makes a terrible face and shudders a little when she has to swallow. I'm guessing Claire will be my kid who doesn't like to try new foods. I'm glad she has such an adventurous eater as a big sister!

At any rate, Claire is now eating 20-24 ounces of formula per day, plus 3 or 4 containers of Stage 2 baby food. We've also tried some of the stage 3 foods, with the tiny, soft chunks of carrots or pasta or whatever. She'll eat those, but usually only about a quarter of the container, and she never acts very thrilled about it.

Sleeping
We're doing okay in this area (knock on wood). Claire usually goes down easily, right at 7 p.m. She sometimes needs to cry a little before she falls asleep, but these days, that hardly ever lasts longer than 5 minutes. She generally sleeps until at least 7 a.m. She still sometimes wakes up for a small bottle around 4 a.m., but that's happening less and less.

She's still napping twice a day—I'm really looking forward to the end of morning naps, since that tends to be when we're busiest. But she doesn't seem at all ready to go to one nap a day. She sometimes naps as early as 9 a.m., depending on when she wakes up. Her morning nap is usually around an hour, and then she naps again in the early afternoon for about an hour and a half. If she's not awake by 3 p.m., I usually wake her up, since I'm really loving that 7 p.m. bedtime! Plus, it allows me to put her down to sleep, and then go read with Elsa until her bedtime at 7:30.

Motor Skills
Considering she started standing a month ago, we've made almost no progress in this area. Claire's development seems to go in fits and starts, so I guess right now we're between fits. She kind of liked standing when she first learned, but lately she seems to hate it. So we're giving it a break for a few weeks, and we'll come back to it later.

I think we've already reached the end of the usefulness of the exersaucer and Johnny Jump Up, unfortunately. It seems early—I know Elsa still enjoyed both of them at this point—but lately, every time I put Claire in one, she screams. She much prefers to sit on the floor and play with toys. Evidently, with Claire, the less movement required, the better!

As far as crawling, you would think since Claire is now sleeping on her stomach, that would mean she likes tummy time more. Wrong. She still hates it. She'll put up with it for a minute or two, and then she's done. The video above shows what tummy time is generally like for us. And note the progression in the video from crying to laughing and back to crying again ... also fairly typical for Claire. This kid's emotions can turn on a dime!

So I'm not sure we're anywhere close to crawling. But just like with standing and stomach sleeping, I'm confident that Claire will do all of this in her own good time (see previous post). It's difficult to get motivated to worry about things like this when I've already been through it all with Elsa.

Everything Else
Claire gets more delightful with each passing day! She smiles and laughs all the time, and she's a very content, happy little girl. She still gets fairly crabby between about 4:30 and 6 p.m., but other than that, she's easy as pie.

Along with peek-a-boo, Claire also loves music and will bounce along to just about any catchy tune she hears. We're back in our regular music class that I always did with Elsa, and Claire adores it! She dances, bounces, and tries to imitate whatever the rest of the kids are doing (pounding sticks on the floor, raising her hands above her head, etc.) Several other moms have remarked about how participatory Claire is for such a young baby.

She also loves paper—crinkling it, tearing it, flapping it around. One of her favorite things is when Daddy reads the Sunday paper and she gets to play with the ads and circulars (no newsprint on those!)

Although Claire can't talk (at least not in a language we understand), she's finding more ways to communicate with us all the time. She loves to wave and has really mastered that skill. She also has started vigorously shaking her head "no" when I'm trying to get her to eat and she doesn't want to. She seems to know exactly what we want from her when we hold up a camera and say "Smile!" I swear she actually stops whatever she's doing and poses, a big grin on her chubby face. She's turning into quite a little ham.

She is making a wide variety of babbling noises now, including two-syllable "a-da" and "a-ba" type of sounds. And her babbling often seems to have conversational inflections. While we were in Florida, Grandma B. and Ellen swore that Claire looked right at me and said "ma ma." I'm still not convinced that "ma ma" refers to me (at least not every time she uses it), but who knows, maybe "ma ma" is her first word! It took Elsa a while to say that one, "da da" definitely came first.

Elsa continues to be Claire's best source of entertainment—she just loves to watch Elsa dance and run around. Other than Elsa occasionally being a little possessive of her toys, these two get along perfectly, and still just adore each other. No sign of jealousy or sibling rivalry here, at least so far.

So that's Claire at 9 months—she sure is fun to have around!