Alleyn Family Adventures: 9 months

And our girl is 9 months! A good friend of mine has been telling me since the moment I met her that a 9 month old baby is a baby at the most magical and fun stage...ever. Now that we have our own 9 month old baby I am starting to believe her! Charlee has become more and more interesting during the last two months and I feel like we are on the brink of a neuron explosion when it comes to her learning and our amazement. Joel comes home from work more often than not mentioning that Charlee "looks different" or bigger or...what they say is true, babies really do change overnight.

In the last few weeks Charlee has started making multiple syllable sounds in her own language. We, of course, respond. This is how the conversation goes:

C: Bla da da da MA!

Us: Mrah mrah bla?

C: Da da da da da da

Us: Da da Ma ma Pa pa Na na (obviously trying to get those more meaningful sounds in there - ha!)

C: La la na na na na

Us: MEOW!

C: (laughs...because cat sounds are the best)

It is a sweet and simple life people, but these are the things that fill my days. I LOVE chattering away with Charlee...sometimes I even initiate the conversation just to get her going because it is sooo darn cute.

In addition to her new sounds, Charlee also has taken her motor skills to a new level. She's not crawling yet, but it seems that every day she gets closer and closer. She can go go from sitting to getting on her hands and knees, where she rocks back and forth screaming until she falls on her belly. I can literally see the wheels turning in her head as she tries to figure out what to do with her hands and knees once she is up on them. I don't think I've ever said, "You can do it!" so much in my life.

Last week Charlee's problem solving skills blew me away and made me laugh so hard. I piled her puzzle pieces far enough away from her so she would have to get on her hands and knees and really reach for them in order to get them. She sat there looking at me, looking at her puzzle pieces sooo far away, and then pulled on the quilt until it bunched up enough to bring the pieces to her. I sat there like, "Are you kidding me child!? Did you actually just figure that out on your own?!" I didn't even care that she didn't try to crawl because her method was 100% more genius. Guys, we have a baby genius.

Ha ha.

Some other interesting things going on for Charlee right now:

-It is a rare occurrence for her to finish a bottle when I feed her, but when Joel feeds her she finishes it every. single. time. This is not annoying at all.

-Shall we just say pureed prunes for the win!?

-She loves cats. LOVES them. Granted, we pretty much do anything we can to help her love cats. I buy her any piece of clothing that has a real looking cat on it, same with books, etc. It helps that we have two cats and when they walk into the room she lights up with joy. We are starting to teach her how to pet the cats nicely (with our extreme guidance and supervision, poor Franklin has suffered two massive tail pulls now). We also meow a lot to her...is this weird? Ha.

-I have no idea how she gets into some of the positions we find her sleeping in, but I tell you, this girl is one crafty sleeper.

-She loves outside (still). If she is ever having a fussy moment we bring her outside and she is instantly calmed. I love this about her.

-We do art together now! So far we have done four paintings. We are working on Picasso status up in here.

-One of her favourite toys is a weird looking cat toy (see!?!) that we got for free from the hospital when she decided to roll off the change table dresser and had to do a trip to emerg. She's hated having her bum changed on that table ever since, but I think the plastic cat toy is a good trade off, don't you? Another more recent favourite toy of hers is a used juice bottle that Joel filled with water. She bangs on it like a drum. We do provide our child with toys, guys, but I don't know if buying them is worth it since she likes the free and recycled versions more.

-One of her favourite foods continues to be zucchini. I still don't get it. This kid eats one large zucchini over four meals. It's insane.

-Still no teeth. Not even a single hint of a tooth. This means no crunchy, weird baby cracker foods for her yet since all those packages state your child needs to be crawling and have teeth before they can eat the cracker-y things. I am 100% okay with this.

And now photos!

This is what we like to call "The Charles Face".

I don't think we have many side profile shots, so I like this one. You can see her hemangioma (clustered blood vessels on her head) is starting to shrink quite a bit.