Morning interview with Lily

Crawling!

Rio Update: 9 months

Dear Rio,

So many changes I don't know where to begin.  You have catapulted yourself from being a newborn to a little kid.   Your biggest development of the month is crawling.  For the record, you started crawling a a week or two after you turned 8 months old.  You are happy and so proud of yourself for mastering this milestone.  You are driven by curiosity and the need to touch everything.  You can turn on the dvd player and open the disc changer in seconds flat.  If I turn around for a second you could be in a completely different room. Today I learned a hard lesson in just how fast you are.  I turned around for one second and you fell off the bed in the basement (which is particularly bad because of the concrete floor). You landed on your head and nose.  You got a pretty bad bump on your head and bloody nose.  I freaked out a little bit.  I promise to not take my eyes off you when you are on a bed again if you promise to never leap off the bed again.  

The other word I would use to describe you (other than curious) is persistent.  You will work and work at accomplishing a task (such as putting a spoon in the dishwasher basket) until you are successful.  You don't get frustrated but you do get very upset if you are pulled away before completing your task.  

Another big change in your world is food.  Last month you had just started eating solids (purees).  Now you are starting to discriminate taste.  You will no longer eat pureed peas but you will gobble up a bunch of whole peas.  You are very offended at most baby food and much prefer whatever is on our plate.  So we've been letting you have exactly what we have for dinner.  You ate spicy enchiladas and loved them.  You love beans, rice, pasta, meat, whole vegetables, bread, and really anything that's not baby food.  You drink out a sippy cup like you've been doing it your whole life.  I'm already having flashes of having to feed you as a teenager and it isn't pretty.  

Let's talk a little about sleep.  You still fall asleep between 7:00 and 7:30.  After that, every night is a crapshoot.  Some nights you don't wake until 3:00 or 4:00 while other nights you are up at midnight and every two hours after that.  And then there's napping.  Your naps are getting shorter and less frequent.  We really need to work on this.  Most naps I lay you down in your crib and after you are quiet for a while I think to myself "triumph!"  Then when I peak in your room you are reaching through your crib bars and pulling all the diapers off your changing table.  Needless to say, you keep us busy.

You definitely understand words now. I know you can understand: Mommy, Daddy, Lily, book, ball.  You babble a lot.  You mostly use /b/, /d/, /g/, and /m/ but it's not uncommon for you to throw in another sound.  

Here you are with a ball in your hand.  Bowie close by your side.  You are very interested in the dogs.  I have found you climbing over Scout a few times.

Lily has been working really hard on potty training.  One night she really didn't feel like sitting on the potty so you showed her that it's not so bad:

Crawling:

A visit from Josh was lots of fun.  Josh gave you a Reese's Pieces box to chew on.  A few minutes after this picture was taken you ate and swallowed a piece of that box:

Watching Josh juggle:

We've had a great month.  We love you oodles.  Sorry I let you fall off the bed today.

Love, 

Mama