Today marks the end of Lauren's ninth month outside my belly. Already. Of course, it also seems she has always been part of our family. She is clearly the happiest, sweetest baby in the whole world.
She remains wonderfully healthy and exquisitely plump. At her well baby check-up earlier this week, she weighed 23 lbs. 14 oz. (95th percentile!) and measured 27.5" long (50th).
Her diet still consists mainly of breast milk but she also enjoys oatmeal, yogurt, applesauce, bananas, avocados, green beans, sweet potatoes and squash. She eats most of these in the pureed form, as she just cut her first tooth three days ago. You can't easily see the tooth yet but she looks like she's trying to show it off here:
Her first tooth timing was excellent because her Mimi happens to be visiting. The two of them have enjoyed each other's company so much over the last week or so.
Lauren's sleep patterns are fairly consistent. She takes two naps, lasting 60 to 90 minutes most days. At night, she usually wakes up once or twice but nurses and transfers easily back to her crib. It's all kind of relative to me because, at her age, Tobin was sleeping with us. Evan had moved reluctantly to a crib and had enough trouble sleeping that we ended up sleep training him. Though I wish she would sleep uninterrupted, I'm happy and rested enough to avoid more dramatic measures to help her sleep better. I have recently let her fuss at the beginning of the night when she seemed to have trouble falling or staying asleep. But she seems not to be having trouble with that anymore. And occasionally, she won't fall asleep nursing so I'll put her back in her crib awake and she might whimper a few times but almost always goes to sleep. My experience with the boys makes me appreciate her relative consistency and also remember that things can change for the better or worse quickly. I feel confident in her ability to soothe herself to sleep (She adorably sucks her thumb!), so I'm hopeful she will continue to progress--apart from the occasional setback.
She's not quite crawling yet but is on all-fours frequently. It's kind of a nice stage for me because she can pivot and scoot and roll to get most things she wants without moving too quickly from one place to another. So I can bring her in the kitchen with me, give her a few things to play with, and get some things done while she's safely underfoot. Tobin was crawling by now but Evan was not, so she's right on target. Although it appears she's not even close to standing, she will try to pull up on an adjacent table or chair. So perhaps she'll cruise before she crawls.
Lauren's chatting us up regularly now, mainly with: "da da," "nuh nuh," "guh guh" and "duhhh!" She claps and makes gestures that approximate waving and pointing. She recently thrilled her big-big brother with a "buh buh." Tobin declared: "Mom, she said 'brother'! It was her first word!" Mainly, I think she's just making sounds but I imagine the associations will come soon. And she will have an eager audience awaiting--and then applauding--her accomplishments.
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