Avery is 9 months!

Avery has now been living in the outside world as long as she was in the womb. I have definitely enjoyed the months that she has been out much more than the months that she was in! She is such a joy. She continues to be active, determined, independent and enthusiastic about life. She is extremely busy. She has been crawling for over a month now and is getting fast. Today she got half way up the flight of stairs before I could catch her! She is also pulling herself to a standing position on everything. She even thinks that she should be able to climb up on top of the couch. She keeps lifting her knees once she is standing as if that is where she is going.  I don't think that she will master that one for awhile (fingers crossed). Recently she also started chewing on the ends of her crib. We have plastic on the sides, but the way it is made doesn't allow for plastic covers on the ends, and of course that is where she is choosing to go to town!

Avery's current sleeping schedule is to wake up at 6:00 am, take a 45 min. nap at 9:00 am, a 90 min. or longer nap at 2:00 pm and go to bed for the night at 7:00 or 7:30 pm. She falls asleep on her own at night like a champ! She even smiles about it.  I sing her "Twinkle, twinkle little star", lay her down and put her blankie on her, and she clutches it up by her face and smiles at me while I leave. We are working on getting to that point with her naps. Right now she takes forever to put herself to sleep for her afternoon nap, so it is painful, but she does it.  She still nurses to sleep for her morning nap. Teaching her to go to sleep on her own has been a long and imperfect process for both of us, but I think we are both getting better at it.

Avery is less and less interested in nursing.  After she was sick and had lost weight, and was too distracted to nurse as much as she needed to, I started supplementing with formula. She was really enjoying being able to be semi- in control of her drinking while we were using a bottle. She would "help" me hold it up etc. And Andrea gave me a bunch of her extra frozen bags of breast-milk so that I wouldn't have to keep giving her formula which was so incredibly nice of her! My pump is lame, so pumping my own milk is extremely time-consuming, so this was so awesome. But Avery stopped taking bottles a couple of days later. All she wants to do is eat whatever I am eating and drink my water from my glass cup. Do you have any idea how much a baby backwashes when she drinks from a cup? Ha ha! It is pretty gross. And literally she will yell at me until I give it to her if I eat or drink in front of her. If she thinks it is mommy's and that mommy likes it, she will eat anything.  Seriously. By giving in I have created quite the demanding little monster albiet a very cute one (even when she is yelling).

Some of my favorite things that Avery does lately:

• When she wants me to pick her up, she crawls over to me and starts banging her head against my legs
• She yells when she wants something. It is not crying, but yelling. It is hilarious!
• She is so dainty with her chubby fingers. 
• She will take cute little bites of crackers or apple. She makes good use of those teeth!
• She has become even more effective at splashing in the bath. She can get rid of half of the water in her tub before you know it!
• She claps all the time. She claps when she is excited, when she is trying to entertain herself because she is bored, when she is telling me good job.
• She loves to turn the pages when we are reading. That is the only purpose of books for her.
• She gets upset when Brad leaves for work and is overjoyed when he comes home.
• She initiates peekaboo. Tonight she pulled something over her face and didn't come out till we said, "Where's Avery?"
• Understands what I am trying to communicate.
• Showing empathy.
• Loves "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".
• Her favorite books are "Goodnight Moon" and her "Peekaboo!" book.
• Her favorite foods are apples, cheerios, peas and tilapia.
• Her laugh is amazingly adorable!

Stats:

18 lbs. 13 oz. - 43rd percentile

28"in height - 57th percentile

17" head circumference - 21st percentile

Love you baby!