9 month appointment

Copied from FTM and backdated to fill in historical data.

She was 18lbs 1.1oz (40%) and 26 3/4" (25%). The doc said that since she was making so much developmental progress (mental and physical), she expected to see a slow in her growth rate. She also finally got her 2nd pneumococcal vaccine.

I was advised that, since she's trying to mimic words already (she watches us say 'cat' and pretty regularly gets out 'ca' while looking at the kitties), I shouldn't push so hard on the sign language because that could actually slow down her talking. Since my sister is a deaf mute, I'd actually like Ryanne to have some ASL as her 2nd language so I guess I have some research to do there. Any book/web site advice?

Ryanne did her usual showing off and stood up in the middle of the room just to show the doc she could. No steps, though. We got a couple more the other day when she wanted something on the stool behind me. I asked about shoes, just to get her advice, and she said to try to keep them soft soled for as long as possible. I haven't seen sizes above 9 months with a soft sole, though. What did you ladies with walkers do?

Other than that, it went very well. I had a ton of questions about feeding, etc, since she started spitting out her baby food when her 2nd tooth came in (the doc even said she could see the two top starting to make their way) and we switched to primarily finger foods. Initially, the doctor said she would like me to try to continue baby cereal. In the end, though, her hematocrit levels were 'great' so the doc told me not to drive myself or R crazy with the cereal, but to just keep trying to give her lots of variety on the finger foods.

We were also told to night wean her to protect her teeth. She's been waking between 1 and 2 for a couple of weeks. I thought it might be habit because she spent so much time the last 3 months waking up in the night for something (stuffy nose, teething pain, etc) and the doc agreed, but said to let her CIO. I can't do that so I've told DH he'll have to start getting up more since she just doesn't want me in the middle of the night if she can't nurse. We've used many of the methods in Pantley's No Cry book so I guess I'll have to re-read to give him some tips.

I scheduled an extra appt for end of Sept (11m) so the doc can try to see her (but no 12m shots) before we leave for Japan. She told me that I could get any regular vaccs over there since they are as stringent, if not moreso, on the requirements.

Thanks for checking in on us. Some warm 9 grain bread (one of R's faves) that DH is baking for all of you!

Big girl

Well, we made the move from Midland back to Austin. Whew...that sucked! We ended up not leaving until about 8p on Sunday (7/18) night. Poor RC screamed in the back of the car for the first 2 - 2.5 hours. On Monday, her second tooth had cut through which explains the screaming. Doesn't make me retroactively have liked it anymore, though. Poor Chrys worked his butt off to get us moved - I don't know what I would have done without him and his mad ability to do great things on very little sleep.

While we were packing up and stuff, my sister watched Ryanne for a while. They ended up playing in the front yard. While out there, Ryanne kept deciding to pick stuff up and then she wanted to get a better look so she'd stand up to get her hands back (from a crawl). This was a first - she had been exclusively pulling up until then. Lis said that she would stand up and hold her hands in the air until Lis applauded, then fall down giggling and keep on crawling. She's such a ham. Now, she does it all the time, but luckily has decided to forego the waiting for applause. :)

This past Sunday (7/25), she got good and mad at Chrys and I had just sat myself down on the ottoman next to them. She let go of him and in 2 of her big Paul Bunyan baby steps made her way over to me - no hands! First steps...craziness! Haven't been any more, but watching her around the house, it's only a matter of time.

Also, she's crazy on the stairs. She loves to crawl up them and then get walked down. She kinda walk/falls down...it's funny to see.

Project Blog

A friend of mine is blogging today for the American Cancer Society. She posted this poem on her site and I wanted to have it for RC someday.

The Planned Child
by Sharon Olds

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken
a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me -- I would have
liked to have been conceived in the heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the
rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion
cartwheeling across the dark, not
the earth, the sea -- none of it
was enough, for her, without me.

Ready or not

Ryanne's standing hiatus seems to be over. She's doing LOTS more standing, with everything. Yesterday, Mick gave her the walker (looks sort of like a kiddie lawn mower) and she even did some walking around with that. She may yet walk by the end of the month - YIKES.

She's doing more exploring and getting more rebellious already. "No" will still usually make her stop doing something, but I still try to reserve it for the really dangerous things like power cables or the outlets on the wall. She also responds really well to her name and I use that for some of the lesser infractions, like eating important papers. :) There are times, though, that all she does is smile at me when I say her name or No and then off she goes back to whatever. This one's going to be trouble.

She's getting much better at eating. She's pretty good about having something at each meal. Dinner is still the hardest and I think it's because she's getting tired. She wants to go to sleep or play with the toys she hasn't seen all day, not be stuck in the high chair. Hopefully it will get easier when she doesn't spend days away from home.

She really seems to be tiring of baby food. She'd much rather have stuff that she can pick up with her fingers. She's getting much better at picking things up with her thumb and pointer finger. She's still not using just the tip of the pointer, but she's getting closer every day. She likes meals that she feeds herself better than the ones she eats from a spoon so I try to save those for dinner when she's least likely to eat anyway. It seems to be working so far. She feeds herself green beans, carrots, pears, bread, crackers, the Gerber foods (biter biscuits, zwieback, fruit and veggie puffs, wagon wheels, etc).

Right now, I can hear dada telling her to splash in the bath and her little hands hitting the water - what a sweet sound. He's taught her how to turn the light in the bathroom on and off and she just LOVES doing this. We'll have to find her one of those extenders so she can do it from the ground in approved rooms once she gets walking. She also LOVES brushing her tooth. No clue when the next ones will show up, but no signs of them yet.

Her other trick with dada is staying really stiff and letting him hold her up by her hips. He sticks her out like a superhero flying, holds her above his head, and holds her out from his chest. She really enjoys it.

And now, she's whining mamamamama and making the sign for milk so I guess I know where I ought to be.

Still not standing...

Well, Ryanne seems to have given up on standing up. She's gone back to just crawling everywhere, and becoming quite the crawler. She is getting SO fast that she actually made it to the plug on the other side of the couch and pulled the plug cover out before I caught up to her (she can squeeze through between my rocker and the couch and I can't). Nothing seems to slow her down, even the dresses grandma sent!

She still seems to enjoy walking with someone holding her up, though. She's practically running when she does that, even. She takes these huge steps and moves very quickly.

We're realizing that we don't point and identify objects very much so we're starting to work on that. She's starting to play "Where is?" a lot better. If you ask where dada or mama are, she'll look around until she sees the right one. She still doesn't clap, but she is doing lots more waving hi and bye and starting to do it when requested. Tonight, she even started some mimicking - I was laughing and she started looking at me and giggling, too. It cracked me up even more! I think she may even know what "mama" means when she says it, but I want a few more trials of context to be sure.

I think her cold is almost gone. Hopefully this means she'll go back to sleeping well. I really miss my 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Right now, I'm lucky if she's not up for the first time by 1a. I barely wake up once she's in bed with us (yes, still doing some co-sleeping, for my own sanity) so I get a decent night's sleep, but it's not the same. She's fully trained away from needing to suck on one of our fingers to go to sleep. Right now, her pacifier is music, but that's not a big deal to us. Even Chrys needed music to fall asleep until he started sleeping with me and it kept me awake. :) Chrys was even able to get her to fall asleep in her crib tonight just by stroking her head and back. This is a change from falling asleep in our arms to the music. Slowly, but surely, I think we'll get a great sleeper!

Chrys started back to work full-time on Monday. This lasted until Wednesday before I cracked and ended up a sputtering mess begging him to only work half-time. Now, he's flexing his days (per his manager) so that he only works in the mornings. He'll end up making up the hours later, and then some.