River is 9 months old!
-He weighs 17.75 lbs according to our digital scale when he’s naked.
-He is about 30.5 inches.
-He wears 12 month sleepers (I literally never put him in anything but a fleece sleeper).
-His hair is light blonde and his eyes are blue, but a greyish dark blue. Not a clear blue.
-He has 2.5 bottom teeth (two middle and the one to his left of middle cutting through right now) and 4 top teeth (all in the middle). So 6.5-7 teeth. 7 if you fully include the one that’s slicing through at the moment.
-He is still exclusively breastfed. The only food item he’ll ingest is smoothie (he’ll drink mine through a straw).
-We haven’t tried using a sippy cup all month, so I don’t know if he would take one now.
-He nurses every 1.5-2 hours during the day. Sometimes shorter.
-Just a week ago he finally became a non-distractable nurser! For the first time since he was a teensy newborn I can nurse him around other people, with the TV on, etc. For pretty much his entire 9 months of life I had to go to a quiet room to nurse him, and now I don’t have to! It’s amazing!
-He has also learned the value of comfort nursing. Which I love because it means I can relax for a bit.
-His cooperation during diaper changes is hit or miss. I think cooperation was more frequent this month than it was last month.
-Poop frequency is hit or miss. He still has EBF poop, and sometimes he’ll go a whole week without pooping and then poop eight times in two days. Other times he’ll just poop twice a week.
-He wears Flip diaper covers on the middle rise with prefolds (Indian cotton and Thirsties hemp prefolds).
-At night he wears a sloomb medium OBF with a Geffen Quick Absorber and a Sloomb wool cover.
-He has two naps a day. By about 8 months and 1 week this 2 nap stuff became permanent.
-His awake periods are about 3.5 hours each.
-I still wear him for all of his naps, with loud white noise.
-He actually seems to like to be worn now.
-He sleeps 10-11 hours at night total. He has had a couple of nights that were 12 hours recently.
-His night sleep deteriorated this past month, and he started to nurse a LOT overnight. I had to do a bit of a repeat of the sleep training. There isn’t really any crying at all, but it’s just not fun. If I nurse him for a few minutes he will go back to sleep no problem. But if I don’t nurse him he stays awake for a long time. So I get less sleep while “training” him then I do when I just nurse him every time he wakes up. But when he gets used to nursing less, he wakes me up less, which is less disruptive to my night. So it’s a payoff in the long run.
-We are cosleeping and nursing overnight.
-Since going to two naps he almost always falls asleep nursing at night. If he doesn’t he will fall asleep with us just laying in bed without any crying.
-He is a tummy sleeper and has been since about 2 weeks old.
-He is cross crawling on his hands and knees full time now.
-He pulls up to stand on everything and never falls anymore.
-He is standing without holding on to anything often, and he does pretty good at it!
-He is cruising along furniture very proficiently.
-He can climb stairs no problem. He cannot go back down them. He can’t get down off of any elevated surface the proper way (feet first) even though we’ve shown him multiple times a day since he became mobile at 4.5 months.
-He has found ways to climb up onto the couch.
-He can climb on all the floor beds now, even the tallest ones.
-He smiles SUPER easily.
-He like other people fine as long as they don’t want to hold him. He is getting better about this though, as long as you let him warm up to you first.
-He is a HUGE mama’s boy. He can only tolerate being away from me for so long before there’s nothing anyone can do, he’ll just cry and cry and not stop until he’s with me again. It’s still very pronounced but there have been some improvements in the past month. His bond with Justin is strengthening.
-He is still extremely drooly.
-He puts everything in his mouth. He always has to be chewing or licking something. Even if it’s just the floor. It’s shocking that he doesn’t like solids.
-He still doesn’t take a soother, just chews on it.
-He’s always laying his head down on things. Pillows, blankets, the couch, the floor. It’s so noticeable with him because he never stops moving. It’s really sweet to watch.
-After two months of not using the doorway jumper we finally put its away.
-He hasn’t gone in his exersaucer in over two months, but he enjoys cruising along the outside of it sometimes so we still have it out.
-He DESPISES the car still. BUT, starting a week and a half ago he would cry when I started buckling him in, and cry for a couple of minutes, but then give up and be silent the rest of the trip. We only drive in town, so I don’t know how long the silence would last on a longer trip.
-I am in a flare of my autoimmune disease, ulcerative colitis. I’m very fatigued and sick, and it hasn’t been an easy month for me, flaring with a needy clingy 9 month old. The good thing is that he just wants full access to me. So I can lie on the couch, and as long as he gets to be on the couch with me he is pretty happy. He doesn’t require large amounts of entertainment. However, when I have to be on the toilet he will stand and SCREAM at me if he’s not on my lap.
I think that’s everything! Besides my flare, it’s been a good month for River, personality wise.
