Ava---9 months

the months just keep flying by.  it's hard to believe that my baby girl will be one year old in three months.  crazy.  she is at a really fun age right now.  i've been thinking that she seems so much like her own little person now, less of a baby, or i guess less of an infant.  it's hard to explain.  cause obviously she is still a baby.  but she is definitely more opinionated and has her own ideas these days, haha.  i remember thinking that with Z when he was this age.  and what's funny is that i was reading from the wonder weeks about ava's age right now and it says "after having gone through the previous leap, the changes in your baby's behavior are dramatic.  now your little baby is developing into a child."  that's exactly it.  btw, this is a really good book.  for me, it has always been exactly on point as far as baby's development and their fussy times and is so helpful.  anyway, i was just reviewing z's 9 month update and he wasn't crawling yet, he was army crawling, and he was just pulling himself up on stuff.  well, little miss A has been crawling since the last monthly update, she started pretty soon after i posted the update.  and she has been pulling herself up to standing for about the same amount of time.  she is very loud, babbling away and yelling.  she used to be quiet and calm, and i feel like her personality in part has been shaped so far by the rest of us.  i guess that is pretty obvious, but i feel like if Z wasn't so loud and active and requiring so much attention then miss A would perhaps be a little more laid back.  but she has figured out how to get her needs met, too, by being very loud and demanding as well.  it's her evolutionary adaptation, haha.  i has noticed that recently when i am giving some attention to Z, she will now crawl over to me, use my arm to pull herself up and start chatting with me to get my attention.  she will very loudly start babbling, and also she will try to get into my lap or almost like climb up my arm, haha.  it is so interesting.  they are both so willful and headstrong, i'm curious to see how this sibling rivalry business pans out.  i'm sure they will get along but also have some moments of bumping heads as well, just like any siblings.  anyway, so she crawled a couple steps at first and then would sit down, and then within a couple days she was crawling all over the place.  it was almost like it took her a couple days to figure out that she could crawl to actually get somewhere.  but now she is all over the place, and she gets so excited when she gets somewhere and pulls herself up to standing.  little sweet one.

-feeding: nursing still, she is not as intense of a nurser as Z was, and i feel like she is in this phase where she is not really nursing so much.  i guess it's enough though, and i probably don't have to worry about my milk supply, it seems like my body adjusts accordingly and it all works out.  recently she moves around so much when we are nursing; it's almost like she stands and wiggles around on her legs while nursing.  not super comfortable for me.  but miss A is eating finger foods now, and she really enjoys it.  when i was feeding her pureed food, she wasn't super interested, unless i mixed in some fruit puree as well.  but now, i can just put some small chunks of soft food on her tray and she gobbles it up no matter what it is.  literally, she eats anything i give her.  she really likes fruit (peaches, blueberries, raspberries, nectarines) and meats (ground beef, chicken, pork) and she eats veg, beans, etc.  but so far her favorite is rice and salmon.  she gobbles it up while saying "mmmmm, mmmmm, nummm" the whole time.  it cracks me up.  recently, my sister in law gave her some bites of a peach raspberry pie that we were eating and she was so excited, bouncing around, waving her hands and clapping.  so cute.  anyway, i'm glad that we are at the finger food stage because it is just so much easier all around.

-growth: she seems to be in a weight gaining phase now.  she is not chunky by any means, but seems to have a little more chub right now.  probably because she is eating everything haha.  but she still seems so petite to me.  she is wearing 6 and 9 month clothes now.  oh and in the last couple of weeks her two bottom teeth cut.  i'm not sure her height or weight yet because her 9 month appointment isn't for a little while.

-development: crawling, standing, she figured out how to sit back down after pulling herself up, can climb up the stairs now, clapping, babbling really loudly, she puts everything in her mouth, she mimics sounds that we make and a lot of times her and z do a call and response.  she is doing this thing now where she raises her hands up in the air, palms up like she is supplicating to God or something, haha, i don't know it's funny though.  and she says "ah ah ah" while she does it.  actually lately she has been saying lots of different sounds like bababababa mamamamama mmmmuuummm num and some other odd sounds that i've never heard a baby make before.  like rolling her tongue and stuff in her babbling.  pretty funny.  she just seems so aware and active and all over the place now.  she has become pretty clingy to me and hubs and does not want to go to people she doesn't really see often.  that's pretty developmentally appropriate though.

-sleep: this has been big lately.  she is taking two naps pretty easily during the days, but her nights have been sucking.  especially while she was teething.  there were several nights where she woke up probably about 10 times.  hubby and i were wrecked.  she was a mess.  my sis in law gave me some ideas for sleep training and a little pep talk, and hubby basically took it on.  i hate sleep training.  i just can't listen to my babies cry and cry.  it has always been pretty easy for hubs to get ava to go to sleep, so he has been putting her to sleep the past few nights in her crib.  the first night she cried for probably less than 30 minutes.  no crying the second or third night.  the first night she woke up one time, i nursed her and put her back in her crib and it was great.  the second night i nursed her once and put her back in her crib and then a few hours later she woke up again and i nursed her and fell asleep on here floor next to her.  whoops.  but that's how the last couple of nights have been.  and actually, after about a week of this, it seems that she goes to sleep really easily but then wakes up a million times during the night now.  sometimes i nurse her back to sleep but sometimes i nurse her and she will not go back to sleep.  so last night, hubs and i just let her cry.  she cried for about 7-10 minutes and then fell back to sleep.  then woke up at around 3:30 or so and i nursed her.  so i think we are just at the point where she just needs to learn to self-soothe, we are exhausted, we don't want to have the same sleep problems with her that we did with z, and we are not as sensitive to crying as we were before haha.  so we kind of have a plan to let her cry it out in the middle of the night until a certain time at which i will nurse her, because i don't want to night wean her until she is a year or so.  hopefully she catches on quick and can figure out how to put herself back to sleep in the night.  we're done, haha.

-temperament:  very willful.  headstrong.  persistent.  she is becoming more and more like her brother all the time.  i think hubs and i will be very busy and exhausted with these two haha.  she is so opinionated.  and she lets her preferences be known.  for example, hubs and i went out for dinner for my birthday and my folks watched the kiddos.  my mom tried feeding ava a bottle, and she would have absolutely none of it.  she screamed and cried and kept pushing the bottle away.  and when her favorite pinkie got destroyed, i gave her a replacement but it was a different kind, she put it in her mouth and then promptly threw it on the floor.  and then i tried popping it in her mouth for her nap, and she just blocks it, she won't let me put it in, hahaha.  it cracks me up.  if she doesn't want something now, she pushes my hand away or also, when i take something away from her that she shouldn't have, she gets so pissed off and protests loudly.  basically that kind of thing.  whens she sees something that she wants, she goes for it over and over and over until she gets it.  haha.  she loves her baba, and gets so excited when he comes home from work and flaps her arms around until he comes and picks her up.  she is a big fan of her mama and big brother as well.  and as i mentioned before, she is getting more possessive of me.  it seems like she is learning how to work the system a little bit, crying loudly and climbing to me if she gets bullied by her brother.  she is also such a sweet little one, all cuddly and snuggly.  for the first time on her own volition, she gave me some sloppy open mouthed kisses.  sooooo sweeeeeet.

-likes:  eating finger foods all by herself, cuddling with mama, crawling all over, climbing, playing with big brother, face timing with her grama and papa in california, drinking water from a cup

-dislikes:  being cold, wet, getting splashed, having stuff taken from her hands, being bullied by her brother, being by herself, drinking from a bottle, wearing a bib (she always rips it off now just like her brother used to)

haha i tried to cover up my son's business, since he was pants-less here, but it was such a good pic of ava crawling!