9 Months!

Madison Claire turns 9 months old today...how can that be?! She is so much fun right now. She is expressive - in good ways and bad! She will smile, clap, and dance when she is happy and she will grunt and yell out when she is not happy. She has definitely learned how to exert her will and if she doesn't want to do something, good luck getting her to! I tried to put her in her exersaucer today and she just lifted those legs up until her feet were as high as her face in an effort to show me that I could try to put her in there but she was NOT letting her legs go through those holes! We are picking our battles and trying to make sure she knows that she isn't the boss while also trying to respect her choices.

She is a crawling machine and man, she can fly! She has been doing a bear crawl on her hands and feet for a few weeks now and we think she is getting close to standing up on her own. She likes to climb on anything & everything and LOVES anything electronic (computer, cell phone, camera, remote control, her baby monitor). It's amazing how she will make a bee-line towards anything electronic. She is also starting to be very persistent in getting what she wants. For example, if she wants the computer and I sit in front of it with my legs out making a barrier for her reaching it, she will try to crawl all the way around the chair to get to it, or she will try to fit her whole body underneath my legs to get to it. If that doesn't work, she will try to climb over my legs. She is not easily diverted! This is a character trait that is very strong in Ryan. I think it will make for some difficult struggles in her toddler years but I am thankful for this as I believe that in her teenage years she will be very strong in her convictions, just like her daddy.

Speaking of daddy, she is saying da-da frequently. We think she has said it directly to Ryan twice now, but are very hesitant to say it was her first word. I'm not sure how we will know when she says her first word, maybe she already has! She is also starting to express herself through signing. We've been trying to teach her a few (eat, all done, milk). The only one she has so far is "all done". It's precious.

Despite her lack of gaining significant weight, she is eating really well. She likes just about everything we feed her (Thank you, Lord!) and especially likes feeding herself finger foods like puffs, melts and pieces of banana and kiwi. She still hasn't taken to a sippy cup, but has learned how to drink out of a straw and loves a juice box! When she first started sipping through the straw you should have seen Ryan and I...we were sitting there clapping and cheering - we were so proud!!

I've also started weaning her from breastfeeding. I felt like it was time and she started weaning herself because she loves eating her solid foods. I laughed to myself when she started doing this and thought "she doesn't want to be the dumpee...she wants to be the dumper"! I'm still breastfeeding her in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night but have switched the mid-morning and mid-afternoon feeding over to a bottle. Luckily, I've got enough breastmilk saved up in the freezer that she's able to get that in the bottle. I'm hoping to get down to just feeding her in the morning and at night in the next few weeks.

We have started giving her soy formula supplementation in her oatmeal cereal that she eats every morning and each night to help give her some more calories. We go to the Doctor next Thursday, so hopefully it will have helped!

The other big news for her is that I started using cloth diapers after some encouragement from a friend of mine, Audra Tilden. So far it's gone really well - we'll see how it goes moving forward. Right now we are only using them during the day when we are at home. I put her in a regular, disposable diaper at night and when we go out to make it easy. Madison hasn't seemed to mind, in fact, she hasn't reacted at all!!

Here are some recent pictures of her reading, drinking her juice box, crawling and reaching for electronics and just being her cute self!