We’ve now come to the point, Mini-Budders, in which you’ve been on the outside for as long as you grew tucked inside. Well, technically I guess I should write this post eight excruciatingly long days late for the sake of ACCURACY but I won’t split hairs {although I will hold this grudge for the rest of your life, just so you know}.
So! Nine months! This is how you’re stacking up:
Weight: 19lbs 8oz, 46%
Height: 28.5 in, 53%
Head: 17 3/4 in, 50%
Your growth spurts demonstrated in previous months slowed down and you’ve evened out to a very average, very proportionate chubby baby. You are exactly 2 pounds heavier than your sister was at this age and you beat Keaton’s nine month weight by 4 ounces.
The biggest thing this month was obviously that you made the big jump from being a slow-moving/manageable/almost mobile baby to a “ahhh shit the baby’s teetering on the edge of the stairs again” mobile baby. You are my earliest crawler; Rowan didn’t manage it until a few days before she turned 10 months and Keaton was nearly eleven months before he figured it out. Way to overachieve and outshine your siblings, Ezra. It’s not like they won’t already resent you for being the baby of the family or anything…
It was no big surprise when it finally happened because, Baby? You are so wiggly. Moving. Constantly. All you do is squirm and writhe when I try to hold you on my lap. I held your cousin Jackson recently and you know what he did? He just sat there, snuggled in perfectly still without trying to pinch/bite/jump/flail/headbutt/kick or throw himself off on some sort of kamikaze mission. I mean, I love you and all your crazy wiggles but I have to admit it was sort of a nice change of pace.
I’m actually surprised it took you so long into the month to crawl. You had the legs figured out from the get go. Truth be told, there were a number of times this month when I thought you’d just pick up and start walking but you could not figure out the hand movement so you spent the first two and a half weeks a bundle of frustration over getting yourself up and propelling yourself forward only to land on your face. After a while you’d give up and go back to rolling or doing a strange inchworm-esque move to get yourself around.
Finally you got it though and we were all over-joyed for about thirty seconds which is about how long it took you to realize that you didn’t really like crawling. I’m sure it had to do with the new sensation on your knees because soon you opted to bear walk on your hands and feet instead, but after about a week of running into things {because it’s really pretty hard to look ahead and navigate when you’re in that position}, you switched to what I referred to as a pirate crawl because you looked like you were crawling with a peg-leg, always one leg clunkily dragging behind. Now that you’re a few days into nine months you have gotten used to things and the efficiency of the hands and knees crawl {and a desire to chase mama from room to room}, has out-weighed the desire to protect your delicate knees. And anyway, I don’t think you’ll hang out long down on all fours because only a few days after learning to crawl you started pulling yourself up and I just know walking is right around the {securely gated, heavily padded} corner.
Other than that? You’re starting to make strange with unfamiliar faces and places, whereas before you didn’t take too much notice of where you were or who was holding you. You’ve also started to switch over to being more of a mama’s boy this month. Before you were all about dad but the last month you’ve sought mama out more which probably has a lot to do with your mouth exploding with teeth. Dads just are not as receptive to whining as moms are and you figured that one out very quick. But for a guy who grew three new chompers this month you handled things pretty okay. You tend to get extremely whiney/cranky the 48 before the tooth cuts and then you’re fine. Your naps may be disrupted from the teething pain but other than 1 or 2 rough ones, your nights have gone by really smoothly with you conking out at 8pm and waking up at 6am.
Transport has proven to be a bit of a challenge this last month. Though you technically still fit in your baby bucket, we sort of felt like stuffing you in there took some effort so we splurged for a monstrous convertible car seat {which was NOT the one I wanted because for whatever reason all the Chicco Nextfits mysteriously disappeared from every retailer in Minnesota}. I am not a fan of the buckle and you’re not a fan of the seat in general so getting you in there without a short scream-fest is a small miracle but you seem to calm down once we get moving, though you WILL NOT fall asleep in that thing under any circumstance {thus far}. With crawling being The Thing To Do, you get most perturbed when you have to go from the car seat directly into your stroller and even when we just go for short walks around the neighborhood in the roomy BOB you fuss a bit, because “don’t you know I am wasting precious crawling time here, woman?”.
You’ve had so/so feelings about the Ergo so far. Mostly you love it because it gives you unlimited access to mama’s hair which you can yank and pull every which way without me being able to do a good goddamn thing about. Up until now the Bjorn has been our safe bet, and dad’s preferred method of baby transport. Until, that is, you went through a recent growth spurt and daddy took you on your weekly grocery store trip where the whole time you proceeded to kick your feet into his, well, uh, rather sensitive man area {read: BALLS. You kicked dad in the junk the whole time.} So we’ll be spending the next month trouble-shooting baby transport.
In happier, less painful Bjorn times.
Ezra, we love your fake laugh {an exaggerated HaaaaHAAAAA, accompanied by a big cheeseball grin}, we don’t love when you look at us with determination and start gnashing and grinding your braney-new teeth. {That grinding sound makes mama’s skin crawl.} We love when you finally fall asleep so peaceful in our arms but don’t love that it takes 15 minutes of jogging in place to get you there. We love how you eat with gusto but don’t love the red rash you get around your lips from pretty much every solid food you come into contact with. I love that you still nurse really well but don’t love that you like to use me as a jungle gym to climb/poke/prod/push/etc. before, during and after meals.
My daddie spel gud.
Babies are work. HARD work. And I feel like I gloss over a lot of that here because at the end of the day my life is just so full of wonderful because you’re in it. So I look past the hard…the wiggliness, the teething induced whining, your pathetic cries of Tortured Put-Upon Baby when I have to lock you in baby jail, {which consists of the gated community of our entire living room, with every toy you could possibly want and plenty of crawling space}… And what I have left is so many wet kisses, enthusiastic claps, ecstatic giggles and snaggle-toothed grins. And after that? Somehow, everything else sort of pales in comparison. We just love you so much, Baby.
My super kaduper life 