Nine Months!

Claire is now nine months old! I've been lazy with my blogging lately, so it feels like I just posted her eight month stats, but here we are at nine months and we have a few more things to report than last month! At eight months, I mentioned how she had been creeping and sitting up for two months, but not sitting up by herself or moving toward crawling, pulling up, cruising, etc. Just in the last week or two, I've seen her get herself into the sitting position, and she is starting to pull up!

Here she is today, her sweet, joyful self. She's laughing at Mr. Squeaky, a squeaky duck toy she has. She always smiles when she sees me smile, but when my face is hidden by a camera, she often stares deadpan. But Mr. Squeaky off to my left did the trick. Cutie girl.

She went to the doctor this morning for her nine month checkup. Her weight was 18 lbs, 4 oz, which is 52nd percentile—shocking since she's generally been so petite, but not surprising since she eats like crazy. We've called her "Hungry Hungry Hippo" from the start, and now that she's an old pro at solids, she double-fists mashed potatoes, squash casserole, omelets, anything we put in front of her. Her height/length was still 12th percentile, so maybe she's just bulking up before a growth spurt, the way Kate does.

Just a couple days ago, her big accomplishment was pulling up to her knees on the kitchen desk chair...

And now she's pulling up to her feet in her crib!

We lowered her mattress the other night, to be on the safe side. 

Claire loves playing with her sister, watching her do gymnastics and do just about anything. She is into blocks and balls and play tables (now that she's pulling up). She is fascinated by Charlotte, more than I remember Kate being (here's Kate's nine month milestones post, by the way) and will creep as fast as she can to chase Charlotte around the room, touching her fur whenever she can.

Claire has started saying "ba ba ba ba," and vocalizing a bit more. I'm trying to teach her the sign for "nurse," though I can't remember at what age Kate started picking up on sign language. She is starting to wear 6-12 month clothes, and I'm finally putting away the 3-6 month stuff, which seemed to fit her longer than it did Kate. She wears a size 2 diaper, and I hardly ever put shoes on her, but her size 1 shoes seem to be outgrown, so when I do put shoes on her again, they will likely be the cute, size 2, pink Pedipeds Kate had. I loved those shoes :0)

The girls aren't bathing together yet, since Claire isn't stable enough in the big tub, but we dipped her in for a couple minutes one night to clean off the mashed potato crust that results from her dinner! She's eating so much in the way of solid food that her bottles have gotten even smaller for school, but she still loves to nurse morning, evening, and night. She sleeps from about 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. and then after I nurse her, sleeps again until 5:30 or 6:30. Occasionally she'll go all the way from 8 to 5. Either way, I find that if I go ahead and get up for the day at 5 or 5:30, I feel better than when I try to doze off again until 6:30 or so. I'm not pumping in the morning before work anymore, so I can get up and relax and make a good breakfast, and feel more "put together," even if I'm not technically sleeping the whole night through.

I'm tempted to compare with Kate sleeping through the night by one month (and Claire did too at one month, but then needed to eat more!) but Matt always gave Kate a dream feed before he came to bed at 11 or so, so what felt to me like a 11-hour sleep was made possible by that bottle feed.

To close, here are another few pics of our little piggy in full-on dinner mode. She enjoyed her penne pasta and cleaned her tray . . . and then—oh!—here are a few more stuck in my bib!

Happy nine months, Clairey-Bear!