Brynna has been sooo cheerful and affectionate this month! Her personality, and attitude, are really starting to show more. She hums or babbles when she's happy, and squawks quite loudly when she's not, lol. She loves to give hugs, and rest her head on me. Whenever I pick her up, she plants a kiss wherever she can, usually on my shoulder. It just melts my heart. :)
She is becoming more outgoing, and waves at people wherever we go. She tends to cling to my mom, Steven, or me when a new person is around, but she warms up quickly and becomes very friendly. We were just at a party the other day, and people she just met were holding her. She was happy as a clam, just smiling, waving, and babbling at everyone. She is so sweet to our pets and her toys too. She hugs, pats, and kisses them. It's just too adorable!!
She loves playing outside and going to the park. Her face lights up when she hears music. She likes dancing and looking in the mirror. She is a content baby. She never minds playing with her toys by herself while I take care of other things. She is always well-behaved when we go out, just looks around at everything with wide eyes, taking it all in.
Brynn still adores her sister more than anyone, and they love playing together. I've noticed a bit of sibling rivalry starting, where Kaylee will get annoyed that Brynna doesn't want to follow the rules, or Brynna screeches when Kaylee doesn't let her have the toy she wanted. But Kaylee is very patient and for the most part, they play together very nicely, and are very affectionate with eachother. I just love seeing their bond continue to grow. :)
She is very good at crawling, pulling herself to stand, and walking while holding onto things. She can balance standing by herself for a few seconds at a time. She is always watching and copying us when we do things. She tries to brush her hair with a brush, brush her teeth with a toothbrush, put a phone to her ear, etc. The other day she tried to grab a q-tip and put it in her ear, so we have to watch her with that, lol. We also have to watch her when she's getting off the bed or couch because she does it right sometimes, but other times she falls off backwards.
We are still breastfeeding, although there have been times this month when I wanted to wean. She is choking/coughing/fussing less but biting more. (And she has 4 teeth now so yeah, super ouch!!) Right now we're down to about 4 feedings during the day and 2 during the night. She doesn't have the same love of nursing Kaylee had; I think she will end up self-weaning sooner rather than later.
She has solids 4 or more times a day, and she loves them. She hates being fed, so we have to modify everything so she can feed it to herself. If it's liquidy, we pour it on baby crunchies, cereal, or bread. We let her try eating with a spoon for the first time and she did surprisingly well at first. But in the end, there was yogurt all over her, and pretty much the entire room, hahah. She also gets a sippy cup with water or coconut milk in it. She seems to like it just as much as the bottle so I just assume get rid of the bottle. She still sucks on her pacifier or thumb sometimes when she's cranky.
She is repeating/imitating a few sounds/words. She has said mama, dada, baba, sis, nene (what we call my mom), foh (fox), wolf, and a few others. But we're not positive if she connects the words to meanings at this point. The same goes for signing. She does seem to connect a few signs to their meanings, like more, hungry, tired, fox, and wolf. Oh and she also barks whenever she sees anything resembling a canine. It's the funniest thing!
She hasn't been to the doctor recently but my home scale says she weighs 22 pounds, 4 pounds more than Kaylee at this age. She's still wearing Flips cloth diapers on medium setting with medium size Cloth-eez pre-folds, but she's able to take them off by herself now. (If you're thinking of buying cloth diapers, I recommend ones with snaps instead of velcro!) She is wearing 12-18 month clothes with some 18-24 month stuff. It's weird seeing her in things Kaylee wore when she was around 2 years old!
Changing her is becoming an Olympic sport, at this point. She squirms wildly, squealing with glee as she tries to escape. I usually try to dress her as she's crawling away. Sometimes I have to hold her down to get her dressed properly, and that's when her sounds of happy mischief quickly turn to anguish. She has this piercing shriek, which leads to all out bratty fake crying if you don't immediately stop doing whatever you were doing to displease her. I see we're going to have a second little diva on our hands... I don't even want to think about the teen years!
Her sleep patterns are the same, if not worse. I still try to get her to take 2 naps during the day but don't always succeed. When she does nap, she usually sleeps for an hour and a half. At night, she sleeps for a few hours, then is restless the rest of the night. Sometimes she wakes up literally every few minutes. It drives me nuts! I'm pretty much tired all the time. I am not sure what is waking her, it seems to be stomach cramps sometimes, and she does get diarrhea randomly. I'm doing an elimination diet to see if it might be something she's eating (which I'm following too, since she gets everything I eat in my milk). Below is my desperate attempt to get some sleep, where I put her in her vibrating seat with her head inside the bathroom so the white noise of the bathroom fan might keep her asleep, lol.
I can't wait for another month of watching her grow up. :) I'm just hoping this month involves more sleeping and less biting! Lol. I just can't believe she's going to be a year old in just 2 months. It's unreal how fast she went from a tiny, sweet newborn to a chubby, crawling baby. And soon she'll be a toddler!! I bet by her next update, I'll be writing about how she took a step all by herself. :)
9 Month Update | Monthly Pics