TO THE 9'S

James turned 9-months-old today (Happy December!), so he has now been growing and changing in the outside world for the same length of time as he spent developing in my belly. I have to say, as easy and fun as my pregnancy was, and as fast as it went by, the past 9 months have gone even quicker. And I think it goes without saying that they've been even better!

What's new at 9 months?

Well, James has another tooth. His 3rd. The top, left, center tooth started to break through Sunday morning and while we know it's there, it's STILL not really visible even tonight (those gaping holes in the gums are still creepy, in my opinion). We're hoping the other top center tooth comes in before Christmas too, so we can avoid the fussies over the holidays... "All we want for Christmas is James' 2 front teeth", because these top teeth seem to be much more painful for James than the bottom 2 were (though, that's understandable since they're so much bigger)!

He eats cheese now:

Also, James is getting better and better and scooting, pushing, pulling, and rolling himself around. He no longer simply spins in circles and it's really fun to watch him go from A to B with such purpose. And he gets up on his hands and knees and rocks every now and then, so with his abililty to dig those toes in and push, all he really needs to figure out now is the arm movements and he'll be crawling... In fact, just last night he made a couple attempts at moving his arms in the correct manner, but they just resulted in face-plants after one "step" - poor baby.

And while James has always been opinionated and not shy about sharing it, he has recently developed the bad habit of what I'm calling "mini tantrums". When he doesn't get his way, he plants his hands (usually on his highchair tray) with his arms straight, scrunches up his shoulders and his face, and SHRIEKS. Sometimes he shrieks so loud that his head shakes and his eyes squeeze shut. If it wasn't such bad behavior, I'd say it was cute. But it's really not. Little stinker. We're not giving in though. We know he's only 9-months-old, but we're not afraid to start "disciplining" him now. We will not cave in to that kind of behavior. We simply tell him "No sir" or "Hush" in a firm voice and wait it out. Honestly, at breakfast the other day, I was all set to give him his yogurt, which he LOVES, when he noticed the Puffs container sitting on the table where we had mistakenly left it after dinner the night before. As I moved the spoon toward him with the first bite of yogurt, he started a mini tantrum. He looked at the Puffs. I looked at the Puffs. Realization hit me. I moved in with the spoon again. Another mini tantrum. So, I said "No sir, we do NOT yell at the table. You will eat your yogurt first". It took a few more tries, but he relented and finished his yogurt like a good boy. Then, instead of Puffs, we decided to introduce him to Cheerios, which he loved immediately. Honestly, the look on his face was adorable - he loved the crunch and the sweetness. And we loved that it took him longer than 2 seconds to eat them (our boy can really shovel the Puffs in these days...). Ah, success.

So, what HASN'T changed?

Unfortunately, his weight. James is holding at 18.4 lbs this month. While he's gained 2 inches in length and his head circumference has also increased substantially (up to 45 cm), his weight-for-height percentile has dropped from the 50th to the 10th. And while we know that babies will jump around on the growth charts, go through spurts and lags, and gain less as they get older and become more mobile, this drop is still unsettling. And not just to us, our pediatrician would like to see more calories going into that little belly too... So, we're upping both his solids and milk intake. And since I simply can NOT pump any more than I already do, what this means is that we'll be supplementing with formula from here on out. He'll still be nursing at home, and I'll still be pumping at work, but we'll be adding a couple ounces of formula to each daycare bottle to increase volume (and thus calories). I have to admit, this turn of events is actually quite hard for me (I know that introducing formula now is in his best interest, but it's still difficult to give up my dream of making it to a year without it), though I hope the transition won't be hard on James. We attempted a 4:2 ratio (breastmilk:formula) bedtime bottle tonight to see how he'd do with it... We were worried, because when we tried mixing oatmeal with formula the other night, he just wasn't having it. He threw a mini tantrum, gagged, cried, and refused more than a couple spoonfuls. When we sent it to daycare the following day, we asked them to mix it all with fruit, and that seemed to do the trick, but we can't put fruit in his bottle... He took the bottle fine tonight though, so tomorrow he'll be getting 3 mixed bottles for daycare.

Another thing that hasn't changed is that we still fight over who gets to hold James first when we get to daycare in the afternoons, and we still fight over who gets to sit in the backseat with James. We do our best to take turns like civilized adults though. You all would laugh at us if you heard our conversations in the car after work... "No, it's my turn to pick him up today, you get the diaper bag", "Fine, but it's my turn to sit in back with him". We're ridiculous, and we know it - we just love our little man so much...

Here's to the 9's buddy!

(Don't worry, it's only root beer, and we don't actually let him have any)