maisie's 9 month stats

At 9 months Maisie weighs in at 14 lbs 6 oz, less than 3rd percentile.  Her height is 26 in, 10th percentile.  Her head maintains its 50th percentile standing at 44cm.  She does have a big head!

Well, not this big--she kept leaning into the camera and I had to laugh when I saw the pix!  Even at the bottom of the charts, her growth patterns are steady and following the normal trends, so she gets a healthy report from her pediatrician. He said it may take her until 18 months to "catch up," and get a bit higher on the charts since she started off life so small at 5 lbs. Developmentally she's up to par, though she's a bit slow with the gross motor, still not crawling.  However, Maddie and Caleb were both late crawlers at 10 and 11 months, so I'm not too concerned about that.

I was a bit surprised to find that she can still wear size 1 diapers. I've been cloth diapering, so it's not something I was paying attention to.  But my neighbor Sara was cleaning out a closet and found some remnant packs of diapers which she gave me.  Maisie still fits in size 1!  Besides being tiny, her hips are just really small too, much more narrow than her shoulders, so that's what allows her to still fit in a size 1 dipey and why all her pants are always too loose. 

Maisie waves now.  If you wave "bye-bye" she will often wave back to you. Maisie also has begun to sign "all done" when she is finished eating and wants out of her high chair.  She is eating her solids well, though she definitely prefers to have what we're having, as opposed to her own puree.  I have given her tiny pieces of soft sourdough biscuit, baked oatmeal, avocado and potatoes off my plate. That's the food she really goes for! She wants what we have--she just needs some teeth to really be able to have more "real" food. 

caleb, caleb

His little egocentric world...

He drew a picture this morning, which he proudly showed me.  It's of him and Maddie playing soccer on two different soccer teams.  Daddy is there saying, "Go, Caleb! Go Caleb!" Caleb is saying, "Hurray! I'm winning!" And the score is Maddie's team 0, Caleb's team 20. 

I said, "Caleb, don't you think if Daddy was there, he'd be cheering for you AND for Maddie?"
He thought about it and then said, "Well, I could draw YOU cheering for Maddie."  So he added me saying, "Go Maddie!" and brought the picture back to show me.

Knowing exactly what he was going to do, I said, "Caleb, I don't want you to show this picture to Maddie, okay?"

"Why?"

"Well, how do you think she's going to feel when you show her a picture of you beating her?"

"...Sad."

"Yes. You will be bragging, and she'll feel like you are saying to her, Look I'm better than you!  And you draw pictures like this often, and it really bothers her."

"Well, another day I can draw a picture of her winning."

"But you never do.  It's always you winning. Why don't you draw a picture of her winning right now and show it to her?"
He thought a moment and then he actually did.

Little steps, tiny bits of progress.

Maisie at 9 months

Some cute things about Maisie these days...

As I walked by with Maisie, Caleb asked, "Can I give Mai-Mai Cutes a hug and a kiss?"  That's a common occurrence in this house.  Caleb also loves to make silly faces and noises and make Maisie laugh.

Maddie loves to read in her rocking chair beside Maisie's crib in the morning when they wake up.  We love it because she keeps Maisie happy for a while. 

Maisie still growls.

Maisie rolls over tummy to back and back to tummy all the time, and she is particularly rolly and squirmy these days when you try to change her diaper.  And she loves to chew on those toes too!

Maisie has finally taken to food.  She ate a half jar of carrots the other day! She likes to sit in her high chair at the dining room table with us during dinner and slowly eat her cheerios.  Most of them end up in her chair of course.  And she's always got one tightly held in each fist. 

Maisie still has no teeth--just a cute toothless smile. 

Maisie will give kisses on demand--big fat, drippy ones. 

Maisie LOVES her daddy.  She gives him the biggest smiles, and watches him, waiting for him to look at her.  She loves it when he comes home from work at night.

Maisie is snagging anything she can get her hands on, and babbles and talks a lot.  No words yet though.  

And the not so cute thing...
Maisie has entered her first difficult phase.  For the first two weeks of the new year, she wailed at bedtime.  Getting her to bed was a good 2-hour process each night.  As soon as you would walk in the room with her, she would start throwing a fit.  We couldn't figure it out!  Braden was up with her some nights until midnight.  She would cry whether you held her, rocked her or walked with her.  She'd refuse her passy and throw it away, and she'd refuse her bottle, and we even tried tylenol in case it was teething--nope.  And she would get sooo tired, it was so obvious she just needed to sleep.  It was weird too because she was perfectly happy and easy-peasy during the day, even for naps.  All I literally do is walk into her room with her, lay her down, give her her passy, put her blanket on her, and she goes to sleep for 2-3 hours.  That's what she USED TO DO at night as well...prior to this experience! After two weeks we finally got her going down around 7pm again and sleeping through the night...but the last 2 nights she's been at it again, the cute little stinker.

classic

So my mom took Maddie and Caleb to her friend's house to see the chickens she keeps in her backyard.  Kids left excited to see some chickens.  Well sometime later they return home, I open the door, Caleb is BAWLING.  And if you know Caleb, he can really bring it on.  Crocodile tears, his big mouth wide open, loud sobs of anguish.

Well, apparently Maddie and Caleb had each left the friend's house with a chicken egg in a baggy.  Maddie was dutifully careful with her egg.  Caleb, on the other hand, decided to play with his on the way home...and yes, you know exactly where this is going.  About 3 minutes from home, he (accidentally) smashed the egg right smack in the middle of his lap--gooey egg spread all over his jeans, in the middle of his legs, and on his booster.  Nice!

Christmas: part 2

So somehow we got quite a few videos from Christmas with Braden's family but hardly any pictures.  Go figure!  I've got to get better at staying on top of the pictures at Christmas!  We don't even have any from Shawn and the kids' visit.  Good grief!  But we had a great time with all of Braden's family on Christmas day and the week following. Maddie and Caleb just love being with their cousins, and Maisie eats up all the extra attention.

But here's Caleb, having opened up his gas mask.  Braden and I scored that at a white elephant exchange and knew he would just love it.

Maddie, having fallen asleep one night.  Maybe something smelled funny? 

Maisie with a cheerio (and a halo because she's such an angel baby)--I've got this great cheerio pic of Caleb too. Maybe we need a cheerio gallery in our house.  :)

And thank goodness I thought of taking these two pics at least!!

christmas 2011: part 1

Two cute Christmas photos: the boys and the girls. Next Christmas there will be one more in one of these photos.   

 

On the 23rd we went to our church's Christmas Eve service, and then afterwards spent the evening with Braden's family.  

Christmas Eve we were with my family all day.  

Christmas morning, here we are at my parent's again to eat our traditional brunch and open gifts.

  Braden noticed that La was just getting ready to roll out the pastry dough for the baked brie, and so we halted her progress to open one of her presents from us: a black marble rolling pin.

Here is Maisie getting her one and only gift from Mommy and Daddy.  Our "poor" children get skimped on that first Christmas.  We only get them one small thing.  They'll never know...til they read this blog one day!  :)  But for just one gift, Maisie has LOVED this wooden giraffe I bought off etsy.  She can chew on it to her heart's delight, which these days is a lot of chewing.  And because of the legs and long neck, there are plenty of places her little hands can hold.

This picture is so funny...Maddie and Caleb got snowpants from Auntie La and were SO excited and started acting silly right away.  Now if only we could get some snow!!

We had a lovely, laid back, stuffed tummy, Christmas morning. 

(...Though somehow I made it through the morning with no pictures of my dad.  How did THAT happen?!)

*Update: I stole a pic from my sister...gotta have a picture of my parents at Christmas!  This was on Christmas Eve.