these stairs are made for climbing

She figured out how to climb up the stairs. Oh my. Time to shop for baby gates. She's also learned that mommy's wallet contains fun items like debit cards and cash.

noting for the baby book

Because I still have yet to fill out any of the adorable "Life With Baby" book that I bought, I wanted to capture this somewhere. Olivia has another little tooth coming in -- it's on the bottom left, next to the teeny lower teeth that popped through when she was 4 months old (is that right? I'll have to search the archives!).

The lower teeth don't throw me like her upper ones did. Every time I get a glimpse of them, I get a little twinge of sadness that she's growing up so fast.

Pictures to come if she'll ever let us touch her mouth!

New movie: "When Teething Babies Attack"

Other names I'm tossing around for my new horror movie screenplay:

"Cujo vs. Crib: Ultimate Fighting Cage Match"

"What Not To Feed Your Baby"

"The Baby Who Had Ginsu Knives For Teeth"

It almost looks like the tick marks a prisoner makes on the wall as they await their release, doesn't it? Poor, poor Olivia's belly filled with wood and varnish. :( Poor, poor pretty crib.

lots of new things

It's crazy -- in the past week or so, Olivia has started doing a bunch of new things. She can wave (though mostly for hello than goodbye so far), she says hi to us when we walk in a room, to people at restaurants, etc. Such a social girl! Given how introverted her father is and how shy I was for most of my childhood, I'm not sure where she gets it.

She'll clap her hands when I say "good job!" or "yaaaaaaay!" -- I do a lot of that while she's eating -- and she'll also clap if we ask her to. She likes to give us five as well, but it's more of a down-low five than a high five. When you ask her if she sees any birds, she looks out the window, and if you say, "where is _______?" [insert "Nugget/Antoy," or any of her toys], she'll look around until she finds it. She loves to untie shoelaces, and she figured out really quickly that you always have to pull the non-bow pieces to get them untied. It's so strange and so cool that she's turning into such a little person. It seems to have happened overnight. I swear, the last 9 months have been a total blur.

Last week we had the pleasure of all having colds while Olivia was also getting her top teeth all the way in. That wasn't the most fun ever. *sarcasm* She is VERY opinionated lately, and especially hates having her nose wiped. She shows her displeasure with flailing, sobbing, and even some choice kicks to the face. Wow.

She went to town chewing on her crib while her teeth were coming in. Despite buying a gummy cover for the crib rail, she's still working on chomping it down to bits. She's figured out how to unstick and lift the gummy piece, and the rail looks like it was attacked by angry beavers. Siiiiiigh. The thought of her ingesting varnish and wood shards makes me positively twitchy. I should have saved my money on all that organic baby food! :p My mom is working on some sort of a padded rail cover that will hopefully keep her from further gnawing.

Solid foods are starting to go a little better. She hasn't had a major gag or vomit incident recently, and she's starting to be able to handle whole Cheerios and zwieback toast. Hopefully that was just a short-lived phase that she's growing out of, because god knows I can't handle much in the way of barf.

Since I know you're not here for my babble, but for photos ... ;)

Reading the paper:

Showing off her newfound standing/balancing skills:

9-month appointment

Olivia had her 9-month well-baby checkup today, and her pediatrician seemed really happy with her weight gain, etc. Her stats:

weight: 19 pounds 4 ounces (60th percentile)
length: 30 inches (98th percentile)
head circumference: 45 centimeters (80th percentile)

So in summary, she's a long, lean baby with a pretty big noggin. :)

He encouraged me to keep plugging away with solid foods despite all the gagging, so today I got brave and gave her some mashed up black beans and shredded cheese (we had burritos for lunch). She seemed happy to eat both, and didn't gag once. Maybe next I'll start giving her whole Cheerios instead of breaking them into tiny pieces. Yeah, I know how to live on the wild side!

I was also advised that I need to start breaking her of the habit of her 3- or 4-a.m. feeding. I would like nothing more than to sleep through the night, but I'm wimpy and don't want to deal with her crying, either. Hopefully once she learns to sit down from a standing position, she'll have an easier time just going back to sleep. Of course, add teething to the mix and that changes everything.

I'm already starting to plan her first birthday party -- I even bought her party dress last week!

9 months!

Happy 9-month birthday to our little lumpkin the pumpkin!

Her favorite thing to do today:

Enough photos -- she's out of here!

Belated happy Halloween

from our little ladybug!