October 18, 2016

Marlowe update: 9 months

Marlowe has now spent as much time on the outside as she did on the inside! She’s changing so much the older she gets and is so much more content. She’s super-mobile now, and can entertain herself playing on the floor and crawling around the house now. So much so, that we call her Ralph sometimes now…as in “Wreck-it Ralph”. She can make a giant mess within seconds with books, blocks, Jenson’s train, the dog water, etc. She rarely wants held anymore unless she’s hungry or tired – she just wants down to explore and wreck things. She wants so badly to do what Jenson does…sit with him on his couch, eat snacks with him, play with whatever he has. She definitely understands “no”, and she sometimes listens when we say it. She’s just so happy most of the time now and it’s awesome – such a huge change from several months ago. One of my sisters told me that she felt so bad for me when she visited in June – Marlowe wasn’t easy and we didn’t have help. It’s funny because while I know it was hard, it was our “normal” by then and we were just trying to make it through the day. And to me, things seemed so much easier in June than in April. Regardless, she’s a different baby now – so smiley, content, and nosy.

Marlowe: August 29 – September 28

Age: 9 months old

Weight: 15 lbs., 2 oz. (25%) at her 6 month appointment

Length: 26.5 inches (90%)

Clothing size: She’s wearing 9 and 12 month clothing, with a few random 6 month pieces still lingering. She’s a size 2 in shoes, though she’s only had them on for pictures. Baby shoes are cute, but not worth the trouble. She’s in a 3 for diapers and we switch between cloth and disposable.

Hair: Her hair is finally filled in on the back of her head, and is getting really long on the sides and top. It lays down stick straight now (like mine) and is almost starting to get in her eyes. It’s blond in most lighting, and where is thicker and in certain lighting it looks strawberry blond.

Eyes: Blue. The color is so pretty…I really hope it stays, but Jenson’s turned from blue after 1 year, so I wouldn’t be surprised if hers still turned.

Teeth: No teeth, though I swear a started to see a small white dot on her lower gums, but it disappeared after a day or two.

Temperament: She’s so sweet and lovey. She loves giving and getting kisses. She prefers to be down on the floor exploring. She really happy now, unless she’s hungry or tired or has a dirty diaper, and then she’s a little whiny. She goes with the flow, and if she’s in the stroller or seat for awhile while we are out, she’s fine. She’s very nosy – always looking around to see what Jenson is doing, or where Boof is. She gets distracted easily while nursing because she’s such a busy body now.

Now let’s be clear…she still has a temper, but it’s pretty rare these days. Unless you take her hairbrush (or something else she wants) away from her.

Sleeping: She takes a morning and afternoon nap still. The morning nap ranges from 30-60 minutes, and the afternoon nap from 45 minutes -2 hours. She still is terrible at sleeping at night. She wakes every 2-4 hours; but much closer to every 2. It’s unpredictable, except she typically wakes between 10 pm-11 pm for the first time (so before I even go to bed). She starts getting tired around 8 pm, so we try to get her in bed by 8:30. She wakes up for the day between 9-10 am usually, with the multiple nighttime wakes, of course. She’s sleeping in the pack-n-play in our room…she slept well in there when I stayed at my in-laws, so we just stuck with that instead of the crib in case it would help (I don’t think it does). I’m not going to lie…it kind of sucks to not get sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. I dread going to sleep because I know I’ll have to get up constantly. I’m honestly functioning really well on the little amount of sleep, but it wears on me mentally. Part-way through the month we started letting her cry if she wakes before 11/11:30 pm. We’ll go in to make sure she has a pacifier and watch her on the monitor, but it just sucks. She gets more riled up when we go in to check on her, so we try not to unless she needs her pacifier. She cries harder and more consistent than Jenson did when we started sleep training him. But I know she doesn’t need to eat that soon after going to bed. There’s just no way. She doesn’t want help or bounced or anything to do with Loren…she just wants to nurse. It’s so odd because she’s not a comfort nurser and she doesn’t fall asleep nursing…she just nurses for her standard 5 minutes or so and goes back to sleep. Most babies who wake to nurse want it for comfort and to go back to sleep (while nursing).

Eating: She’s eating quite a bit of food now. We give her bits of whatever we have if it’s appropriate for her. She loves yogurt drops (just frozen dots of plain Greek yogurt) and O’s. She’ll eat pretty much any baby food that we give her. With Jenson we didn’t do a lot of actual baby food, but we do usually give her some every day. As she gets more and more variety of food, she’ll have much less baby food of course. As far as nursing goes, she gets so distracted while nursing during the day, but she’s obviously getting her fill at night. She’ll go about 3 hours in between nursing sessions during the day.

Movement: She learned how to sit up on her own from laying down early in the month. She started crawling on September 13 – ironically after ones of Boof’s toy hedgehogs….just like Jenson! She became pretty confident with it quickly and loves to explore. She tries to pull herself up on the side of Jenson’s little couch to see what he’s doing or try to steal his snacks. She’s big into dancing now. We went to Toddler Dance at the library and she had a blast shaking the instruments.

Milestones:
–Sitting up from laying
–Crawling!
–Pulling up to things on her knees
–Saying several words by the end of the month (mama, dada, boof, papap, papaw)
–Ran her first board meeting

Favorite toys/activities:
–Crawling and exploring
–Swinging on the playset (and sometimes nap there)
–Baths
–Chewing on everything she can get in her mouth (Unfortunately she prefers shoes, yuck!)
–Eating
–Watching Jenson and trying to get to him
–Chewing on her pacifier and playing with it
–Being tickled
–Dancing
–Wrecking things

Dislikes:
–Taking things from her that she was playing with or chewing on
–Waiting to eat once she’s in the chair
–Being held instead of crawling around
–Sleeping. She just doesn’t like doing it for more than 2 hours at a time.

Sibling Rivalry:
She LOVES Jenson. She watches him constantly and all he has to do is talk to her and she’s happy. She tries to get to him and play with him. Jenson loves her and will play with her and talk to her, but he does (often) take her toys and he gets mad when she’s trying to get his snacks. He always has to go up with me to get her when she wakes in the morning. He’ll even stop watching a show to get her. She lights up when she sees him.

I think she looks so much like Lo and Jenson in small ways, though people typically say she looks like me. She looks like them here, I think. I can’t really place who she looks like in the white, but I think it must be them.

Sounds and Words:
–Big belly laughs
–Loud, girly screeches
–“ya ya”
–expressive faces and scrunchy nose when she’s really happy
–mocking sounds and words
–Words! “mama” “dada” “boof” “papap” and “papaw”. Not only did she say these words clearly multiple times in the last week of September, she knew who all of these people are and would look at them when she would say it. My mom and I heard her mock my mom when she said “Jenson” once too – I wasn’t even in the room and immediately turned to look when Marlowe said “Jenson”. It sounded exactly like it, but since she hasn’t said it since, I’m not counting it.