Well, this working mom is a little late on Nadia’s 9 month update thanks to a busy weekend away, a long week at work, and a sick day for Nadia. I feel like as soon as I finish writing one month’s update, it’s time to write the next. The days sometimes feel long, but the weeks and months fly. This month, Nadia’s top canine teeth came in earning her the nickname vampire. We have had a lot of laughs joking up her vampire qualities (she’s hungry for blood; that explains why she’s up at night, etc.). Nadia had a good 9 month check-up and was on the 23rd percentile for weight, but 84th percentile for height and 90-ish percentile for head. I guess that’s why she keeps outgrowing her hats!
Next week I am really looking forward to taking a picture of me holding Nadia as she is 40 weeks old, as I’m pretty sure the last picture I took while pregnant was at 40 weeks. Still crazy to think Nadia was born a full week and some change after that! Sometimes when I feel like Nadia is slow to do something (roll over, sit up, crawl, sleep through the night, etc.), I just remind myself that this is the same baby who choose to come into the world at 41+ weeks. She does things on her own timeline.
As for this month, Nadia continues to have such an easy-going personality. She still loves blowing raspberries and now she figured out how to blow raspberries on mama’s leg. It’s so fun watching her engage with us. She often babbles “da da da” but I’m not convinced she’s saying “Dada” as she says “Da Da Da” just as often to me as she does to Daniel.
I can tell she is frustrated because she cannot crawl. When I pick her up at daycare, it’s a maze navigating through a sea of young crawlers and one new walker. I always feel like I’ll try to help her crawl to no avail during the day, but as soon as I’m ready to put her down for bed that’s when she kicks into action trying to practice crawling and pulling up on her book basket.
We see more preferences as well—Nadia certainly has her favorite people (Mom and Miss Nicole at daycare are currently in the lead). The other evening I picked out a stack of books for bedtime and one by one I started to read a story only to have her close the book. That night she only wanted to read the “Snuggle Bunny” book because she loves the attached puppet.
Other favorites include:
-Wiggling– especially while we’re trying to change her diaper. This drives us nuts!
-Listening to music and playing music instruments (the tambourine, xylophone, and jingle bells are popular with supervision).
-Stacking cups—she really loves knocking them over and picking them up one at a time.
-Eating—she’s finally eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It seems like she enjoys almost everything she tries!
As far as challenges for this month, we have cycled through several daycare colds resulting in trips to the doctor and a couple days off work. It’s stressful navigating these last-minute work changes, although honestly nice to be home a little more when it does.
We also tackled our longest drive to date—two 6 hour car rides to see family spanning a weekend. My goodness, if parenting utilized a badge system like the boy scouts, there certainly would be a merit badge for surviving a car-ride through summer DC traffic.
Lastly- here’s a few pictures from Independence Day. We enjoyed staying home (skipping fireworks) and walking through Lewis Ginter in the morning. Daniel orchestrated this photoshoot all by himself.
Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading along.