9 Months Old

Shaylin is 9 months old today.  Each month that goes by I'm in disbelief about how old she is.  She's growing up so fast.  And she has recently done so many new things to show her independence & maturity.

- Shaylin's biggest milestone is crawling.  I'm amazed at how quickly she's taken off.  One day she did a little hands & knees crawling but mostly army crawl (this after barely anything more than rolling) & then in just 4 days she was 100% crawling.  She's absolutely loving the ability to move around & exploring everything.

- This past month Shaylin also started pulling herself up.  She still doesn't do it very often & hasn't done it in her crib yet but we need to lower her crib now just in case she decides to do it early in the morning.

- This seems strange but she has finally started splashing in the bathtub.  She's liked bath time for a while now but she's always been very subdued & just seems to enjoy sitting in the water, maybe chew on a couple toys.  But now she's started splashing & seems to like it.

- She's eating solids 3x a day now.  She has oatmeal for breakfast, a fruit for lunch, & a vegetable for dinner.  This now has our nursing sessions down to 4 a day, maybe 5 depending on how the day is going.  I've also started offering her table foods.  She doesn't have any teeth but she's learning to gum things.  So far she's had chicken, ground beef, ham, pasta, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, & bread.  I also give her these yogurt melts by Gerber as "dessert" at dinner time.  These seem to be the most helpful tool for teaching her to feed herself.  Sometimes they make it in.  Other times I find them in her lap.

- Shaylin babbles a lot but isn't saying actual words yet.  Mostly it's sounds like "ma", "ba", & "ga".  I can hear "mama" when she cries a lot.  No "dada" yet but I'm trying to get her to say it.

- Recently I took her to my in-laws & Shaylin reached out to my mother-in-law.  Totally made her Nana's day.  She also did this to Jeremy the other day when he came home.  It sure made him feel great after a long day of work.