More firsts keep happening for our growing girl. A big one is her first tooth is finally poking through! You can barely see it, but you can definitely feel it’s there. I don’t have a picture yet, mainly because she keeps her tongue on it 24/7, but as soon as I have proof I’ll share. In the meantime, here’s what she looks like every morning as we get her ready for ‘school’:
We also took advantage of one of the non sub-zero days recently to take Ellie out in the snow! She wasn’t a huge fan, but she might have just been a little confused and overwhelmed. I thought she was adorable. I might put her in her snow suit again just because it’s one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. So here’s a ton of pictures:
Ellie continues to progress with her physical movement as well. Last weekend I looked away from her for a second and turned back and she was sitting up. She hadn’t been sitting when I looked away – she figured out how to push herself up to sitting all on her own. She did it a few more times over the weekend and I finally saw her do it. She still only does it occasionally, but she’s starting to figure it out. She also continues to progress towards ‘real’ crawling. She’ll hang out a little longer on her hands and knees before falling over. Her version of crawling (army crawling) now includes a two hand motion, instead of just one hand pulling and one foot pushing. Crazy growing girl. I look at her almost every day and try to figure out how she got so big.
Speaking of being big – she turned 9 months old! I’m so proud of how well she’s grown and how big she’s getting, even when I miss my tiny girl (but I don’t miss only getting 40 minutes of sleep in a row.) As we approach her birthday I’m starting to get a little emotional thinking of what we were doing this time last year and when things started to go ‘wrong’ with my pregnancy, even though they turned out just right. Like my girl sitting here playing with her bear:
With turning 9 months though she had a checkup at her doctor. Her current stats are: Height 27.5 inches (down to 43%) Weight 16lb 12oz (down to 25%). She’s slowed down a little, which is apparently completely normal. Her weight would have been higher too, but she lost almost a pound when she was sick last month and is still trying to make it back.
Her pediatrician says she looks great, but she’s a little behind for a 9 month old (to which I say duh, she’s effectively a 7 month old) so she wants us to get Ellie evaluated just to make sure she’s on track to ‘catch up’ to her real age. I’m not sure how I feel about it. A big part of me says if she’s within normal range for a 7 month old let’s just let her be a baby and part of me says if there’s something we can help her with we should. So, we put in the referral for EarlyOn (Michigan’s early childhood intervention program) and they’ll come see her in March – probably to tell us she’s a completely normal 32 weeker. But it’s free, so whatever. Her pediatrician also wanted us to have her see an Occupational Therapist (OT) as she doesn’t love solids. We took her in for the first appointment last week and the OT said she was super cute, and pretty normal, but gave us a few tips on how to put the spoon in her mouth differently to help her keep her tongue down and food in her mouth.
Other than that, we’re impatiently waiting for winter to end so we can go outside and play and explore the world. Here’s some 9 mo pics, because she’s just too adorable not to share:
