9 months old

Unfortunately as per usual I have not been great about documenting in real time and keeping things updated here, so this might turn into a big information dump about everything Bennett has been up to over the past several months. I could write all day and still have more to say. He's changing so fast all the time and we have been so busy with the new house, the holidays, travel, etc. that it's a bit of a blur despite my best attempts to relish every moment. But it really is time to be better about writing things down. At least I have been really good about writing something down almost every day on his calendar!

sadly, we are missing the 2 month shot due to Daddy's busted hard drive : (

 Bennett had his nine month check-up on 1/4, technically at nine months and one week. He has dropped on the growth charts quite a bit since his six month visit. His stats this time around were 20 lb, 4 oz/44th percentile (down from the 60th), 28.5 inches/56th percentile (down from 72nd), and 46.2 cm head circumference/74th percentile (up from 70th). Of course Daddy was immediately concerned that he's turning into a little shorty like his mama but the doctor assured him that it's not a significant enough drop to be concerned about and growth spurts happen pretty erratically so they are not a great predictor of future size. And no matter what size Bennett ends up, he'll always be our big boy and will be just perfect in our eyes : ) It was a great appointment as usual and Bennett was a champ during the blood draw when they pricked his toe and squeezed it for a while to fill a little tube with drops of blood. He just watched it happen and tried to reach for the tube. He wasn't too pleased about the Hep B shot but he always gets over those pretty quickly after being picked up and hugged a bit. (In general, he is extremely easy to soothe and even the hardest bumps and falls are quickly forgotten in mommy's arms!) We talked with the doctor a lot about the weaning process and nap issues.

waiting for the doc

The fact that Bennett is 3/4 of the way to one year old has hit me hard lately. I can't believe that he has already been here for nine months and is closer to being a toddler than our tiny newborn boy. This is without a date the most fun stage to date and I'm sure I will feel that way about whatever stage we are in going forward. After a few spurts of tiny bits of crawling, Bennett finally started crawling consistently this past month (on December 9th) and is now quite fast and adept at getting wherever he wants to be. (He also loves to "dance" and wave his arms in tune with music as you can see).

He started pulling up just a few days after he started crawling on December 14th. It was such a shock to find him standing up in his crib the first time! It's pretty dark in his room and he had woken up and was crying and when I went to feel for his head to pick him up I realized it was a lot higher than usual. Crawling and pulling up are such game changers! It's so much fun though to just sit back and watch Bennett motor around and decide where to go and what to do next. He loves to go for the coffee table in the family room and will pull up, sit down, and pull up again over and over and over.

Unfortunately the standing up negatively affected his night time sleep and he started to stand up and cry anytime he woke up, which led me to the decision to attempt "sleep training", aka "crying it out". I have been pretty adamantly opposed to this in the past and like most good mamas can't bear to hear my babe crying, even for a moment. BUT, when he was waking multiple times a night and wanting to be nursed and rocked back to sleep at nearly nine months old, I decided that something had to change. The first few nights my willpower was not quite strong enough and I would give in and didn't truly let him cry till he fell asleep. Then for three or four nights however I went in strong and despite the overwhelming urge to give in to his cries, I pushed through. He went down from 30-40 minutes of screaming to about 25 to falling right to sleep and even chatting a tiny bit first! Twice he fell asleep sitting up slumped over against the crib rails : ( From what I have read, most people find that it only takes a few nights of hard core crying before the baby finally gets it so I am glad that I persevered and we made it through. It really does make sense in that when they cry and you go to them and pick them up, they learn that they get what they want by crying and they have total control, whereas when they cry themselves to sleep a few times they learn that they can and should go to sleep on their own. It is funny though how for a few months (around the time that he was 3-5 months?) he did put himself to sleep easily in the crib and then developed the habit of nursing to sleep and needed to be broken of that to get back to good bedtime habits again. I think that the start of teething was probably the start of the nursing to sleep business.

I've also created a nap monster by nursing Bennett down at naptime, usually in our bed. I've tried letting him cry in his crib and once actually spent a few hours trying to get him to nap in there and we both just ended up physically and emotionally drained and traumatized (at least I was...). Of course there are some who say that crying it out raises cortisol to dangerous levels and causes long term damage and is pure evil, etc. However, most of what I have read says that though it's difficult in the moment, crying it out is not truly traumatizing to the baby. I am still terrified of what harm I could be causing him by not going to him when he wants me. For now I just don't think we're ready to cry it out for naps, and it doesn't seem to be causing any issues for night time sleep. For me, this has been one of the most difficult aspects of parenting so far. I take 100% of the blame for it though and wish that I had been better at having him nap in his crib from the start and not using the swings for naps and not nursing him to sleep at all. I really do love nursing and snuggling my little man to sleep, though, so it's going to be tough on mama when it's no longer a part of our routine at all.

snoozing in Mom and Dad's bed

 When he does takes naps, either in his crib or in our bed, he tends to only sleep for 20-30 minutes and will VERY rarely take an hour or two long nap. Miss Norma reports that he doesn't nap great at daycare either and there have been days when I have picked him up early at nap time and he will just be crawling around and playing while every other kid is sound asleep. This no nap thing means that he's pretty drained by 4 or 5 pm and always asleep by 7 or shortly thereafter. Sometimes he'll even doze off for a bit while nursing after getting home from day care or in the late afternoon on weekends, but it never seems to affect bed time at all so usually I let him do it.

Speaking of teeth, Bennett cut his bottom two teeth the day after we got back from Jamaica in early November and then this month his top two came through, the left one on the 18th and the right one on Christmas! He has bitten me while nursing a few times now, but only when nursing on my right. I find this strange since that's the side that has always been my least favorite and least comfortable nurse to on. Obviously nipples are pretty sensitive, tender things and having yours bitten HARD by four tiny razor sharp teeth hurts something fierce and pretty much every time we nurse on that side I am on edge and truly terrified the whole time. Bennett also has taken to biting my shoulder when he is hungry or tired and wanting to nurse. He's definitely a "booby baby" and anytime he is the least bit tired, bored, or fussy, he is clawing at my chest and pulling on my shirt like a wild animal, and will even root around and head butt my sternum until he gets what he's after. Usually distracting him with something else or a change of scenery will stall him for a few minutes but before long he is back at it again. He'll then nurse for a few minutes, pop off and sit up grinning from ear to ear, and be perfectly happy and content again for a while. It's like nursing gives him a second wind and a burst of energy. Occasionally if we are really busy or distracted he will go 3 hours without nursing and on one occasion went 4 hours but more often than not he's asking for it sooner. I've been signing the word "milk" to him when we nurse since he was a newborn and about a month ago he started to understand what it means and will get really excited when I do sign "milk". I LOVE breastfeeding Bennett and am beyond grateful that it has been so easy for us and has gone so smoothly, but being a working, nursing mother has been a huge source of stress and frustration for me. After discussing it with the doctor and Miss Norma, I think we have finally reached a point where Bennett will fairly consistently take three bottles at daycare, but for the most part up to now he has been taking four six ounce bottles every day, usually between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30 or 5:30 at the latest. That's a lot of milk in not a lot of time. 24 ounces is a lot to have to pump every day and the fact that I don't have a desk job and am running around throughout the day makes it tough to fit in enough pumping sessions at the right times. I have definitely mastered pumping while driving and have done that quite often in addition to pumping on one side in the morning and on both most nights before I go to bed in order to maximize my total output each day. Over the holidays while I was off work I was able to freeze some more milk to add to the stash that I had left and am pretty pleased with the fact that I have about 90 ounces still. Hopefully I can match with pumping what Bennett consumes at daycare from here on out and make it to the year mark without depleting that, especially if we get to a point where he is only taking 2 bottles like he did today! At his nine month check-up, Dr. Albert said that he should only be having four nursing or bottle feeding sessions at this point so we do need to work on cutting back.

Bennett had a slow start with finger foods but finally got the hang of it this past month. He definitely was not the type of baby who could just dive into baby led weaning at 6 months and do mostly finger foods from the start. He loves carbs like his mama and goes crazy for bread, crackers, rice cakes, etc. He's also a big fan of scrambled eggs and peanut butter and I'm very glad that he doesn't seem to be allergic to either or anything else that we have tried. He pretty much hates veggies other than spaghetti squash, broccoli and pickles, if they count as a veggie. At Norma's he has been eating three full jars of food at lunch time since he started solids at six months and at home he will literally suck down two or three pouches of purees at a time plus whatever finger foods we give him. The pouches are great though since we usually go for the blends so that he does get some veggies in. He's definitely not a fan of the ones that are purely savory without fruit. Recently for dinner we had salmon and he couldn't get enough of that and he also went pretty crazy for his first pasta dish. He has started to really ask for what we are eating by bopping up and down and saying "ma!" with crazy eyes while reaching for our food. We are making an effort to eat dinner together before he goes to bed which was really easy over the holidays but on work days it's tough since we're usually heading up for a bath by 6:30 at the latest and that doesn't give Michael much time to get home, settled in, and get dinner on the table. Bennett loves Daddy's cooking though!

Daddy's gumbo!

pulled pork at the County Line with Mama, Grammie, and Grandpa Ben

The past month or so has been one of many physical and intellectual developments for sure between crawling, pulling up, clapping, dancing, waving, sleeping through the night, and just recently understanding the meaning of "mama" and "dada". Bennett is just so observant and deliberate and loves to watch and learn new things. One day recently I was spinning a nut in the shell on the counter like a spinning top and he was trying to spin it too after watching me do it. It's amazing to see his little mind working and I could just watch him all day long. He is so sweet, friendly, and sociable and I love seeing him interact with the world and people around him. (This past weekend we stopped by the hospital to meet the brand new baby boy of some friends and Bennett smiled the sweetest smile at the little guy. And when I drop him off at daycare he makes a bee line for the other crawler to pal around with. Too cute!). We are so in love with this little guy and so excited for everything to come.

happy, happy baby and mama