Claire turned 10 months a few days ago. She is a big girl now and getting sweeter and more talkative by the day. Here’s an update on the past few months:

7 Months

• Definitely sitting up on her own now. She is a little person.
• Figured out how to crawl out of her bouncer chair so that had to be retired for a while…
• Almost pulling herself up to standing. I think she might have pulled herself up for the first time earlier on a chair when I was trying to get her 7 month picture.
• She is standing up in her Pack n’ Play, just because when you put her in there she can grab on to the side to hold herself up.
• Saying mamamamamama. Michael is determined that she will say dada first. She hasn’t officially said mama yet but I think she’s close.
• Drinking water from her sippy cup: When we first started the sippy cup with water last month, she didn’t quite get it or care. This month, it seemed like she all of a sudden got it. The first time she got water out she was so surprised and it was so cute. Michael clapped and cheered for her, and then she would take a sip, look at him for approval, smile, repeat. The cutest!
• Claire is now generally eating the same foods as us at dinner time. We were mashing things up with a fork, but then Michael had the genius idea to use the garlic crusher to mash the food up into tiny pieces. It works perfectly!
• She loves avocado! We are currently eating a lot of quinoa and avocado. We are always trying to eat healthier, and quinoa is an easy food to feed baby Claire.
• One really cute thing she did this month was steal my snack! I was eating a GoGo Squeeze that basically looks like her baby food pouches and she took it from me. It was the first snack we shared.
• She also learned how to drink from a straw totally by herself. I was drinking water from a cup with a straw and she stole the straw and before I knew it she was working the straw like a pro.
• She can now put her schnulie (pacifier) in the right way.
• She has become more interactive with her books. She likes to hit the pictures and sometimes rest her feet on the bottom of the pages, which is the cutest. So far she has only ripped one page.
• One day she opened one of the shutters by herself while I had her on the changing table. It was adorable.
• Discovered the joy of flicking the door stoppers when she gets the chance. She is like a real kid playing.
• Michael calls her “My little monkey.”
• Started crawling right at the end of 7 months. On her last day as a 7 month old I thought I saw her coordinating her arms and legs in a traditional, coordinated crawl. She might have been doing it for a while and I didn’t notice because I usually have her in her Pack n’ Play or walker these days. But she is definitely an official crawler now!

I haven’t been all that confident about when her official bedtime was. There were many months where I just crossed my fingers that she would actually fall asleep by 8 pm and not wake up until morning, because I wanted that to be her bedtime. I can now proudly say that Claire’s bedtime is 8 pm!

I am also proud to report that we are finally in a good routine. I can generally count on her sleeping until 730ish in the morning (if I’m lucky), and then getting sleepy for a nap around 930 or 10 am. The nap can last from 1 to 2 hours, and then another similar nap around 2 pm. She tends to eat dinner around 6ish and then I put her to bed with a bottle at 8.

When she was first born, I was a wreck with sleep deprivation. I think Michael was too. I was completely not myself and was completely unprepared for the sleep deprived chaos. I read books and blogs and watched YouTube videos. All I wanted was some sense of control back in my life, and most of all, rest. And some time to myself.

We took a class called Will I Ever Sleep Again? in Scottsdale, and it was truly life changing. But I don’t think I felt confident that I was “off the clock” at right around 8 pm until this month. I will claim this month as the month that I finally feel in control of my life again, at least as much as I did before she was born 🙂

8 Months

• Claire is going to be a big sister! I was really excited about my combo 8 weeks/8 months photo – it’s the only time in my pregnancy that our # weeks/months is the same 🙂
• I found her standing up in her crib for the first time today (Feb 12) after a nap. She is so tall when she’s standing!
• Sometimes when standing she lets go of whatever she is holding on to and stands all by herself.
• Starting to grab her water cup and put it in her mouth. I think she is almost drinking water all by herself.
• Eating more people food…wait, she is people. Big people I mean.
• She is on the move! We need a baby gate for the living room. I was standing by the kitchen table on the phone one day and watched her crawl very speedily on the tile over to the base of our staircase and before I knew it she was on to stair 2 and I was mom-sprinting over to save her before she tumbled back on to the tile. Crisis averted.
• We visited Omi and Pop-Pop in Kentucky again. Pop-pop called her “my little percolator”, he said because she is so bubbly, which made me think that is the origin of the word perky. Omi likes to sing her German nursery rhymes that involve a fun swinging of the baby that entertains Claire.
• Common phrase by me: “That’s my hair – it’s attached to me.”
• Continues to be fascinated by door stoppers. It’s nice to be able to put her down on the floor in a room and know she will be entertained for a good 10 seconds. She spots the door stoppers and darts right over on all fours. When she was first born I was having these weird flashbacks and feelings that I remembered what it was like to be a baby, like the feeling of having a bottle or crying and no one understanding what I wanted. I feel like I might have flicked a door stopper or two in my distant past.
• Started sprouting her 1st tooth. It’s just a tiny tooth stump so far but it’s on its way. She is handling it pretty well, although there have been a few unexplainable fits that we can only attribute to teething.

I had much less notes about Claire’s development at 8 months. I just realized that I can probably explain my lack of note-taking to my baby #2 early pregnancy fog of nausea and fatigue. Hopefully I will get better at documenting her every move in the coming months!

9 Months

• Claire doesn’t seem to like being held “like a baby” when I put her to bed at night anymore. She seems to prefer to be held vertically rather than horizontally and not for very long. This makes me a teensy bit nostalgic for her more “baby” days, but I will always be grateful to have a baby who goes to bed at her designated bedtime and stays asleep for the duration of a long night.
• Seems to know someone named “Bob.” She is alway saying babababababa-bop or bob. Michael has funny conversations with her about knowing various Bob celebrities, such as Bob Saget.
• I saw her clap her hands together just once at first, but as the month progressed she started doing it a lot more.
• She likes it when other people clap for her 🙂 (this has been a trend for the past few months and we first noticed it when Michael gave her a round of applause for drinking water).
• She is ticklish! She has the cutest laugh and it is a good secret weapon to get her to stop crying.
• Weighed just over 16 pounds at her 9 month check-up (was about 12 pounds at 6 months).
• Experienced my first bout of “mother’s thumb.” I guess 16 pounds was my thumb threshold.
• Michael says he loves how she lights up a whole room <3. She giggles sometimes for no apparent reason and it is super easy to get her to start laughing. She likes it when you dance, wave your arms in the air, or just smile at her.
• Michael thinks it’s cute how when he’s holding her and when I enter the room she whips her head around to see me if she’s facing away from me.
• She acts bashful when Michael comes home. She giggles at him but then looks away. Michael calls her his bashful girl.
• I don’t think I noted this earlier but over the past few months as she started taking daytime crib naps, we can tell she is ready for naptime when she starts touching her head and face. It is so cute. Apparently this is standard baby behavior, but we thought it was special and unique to Claire. We are very obvious baby rookies.
• Michael likes to say, about Claire spending time with me: “Hangin’ with Mrs. Cooper…” and it always makes me laugh. I think he must have noticed a recent Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper binge-watching session on my Hulu.
• She is standing up on her own for longer and longer stretches of time.
• She unzipped her sleep sack all by herself and was halfway out of it when I went to get her one morning.
• Caught her picking up her water cup all by herself a few times.
• Grandpa visited for Claire’s 1st Easter and she got to see the Easter bunny for the 1st time.

And now we are in the home stretch of year 1! Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but mostly I will admit that I am enjoying the mom life more and more now that we have a routine that is filled with plenty of sleep. Michael and I look forward to our fun times together as she reaches new milestones, but always remind ourselves not to rush through the stages as we have been warned by many wise, seasoned parents.  We’re also excited for Claire to have a sister (oh – guess I just spilled the beans that it’s a girl!), to get to use her cute, tiny baby girl clothes again, and to get another chance to be a baby parents and do a few things better the second time around.