Today is Alethea’s nine-month birthday.  Happy birthday, Baby!

This is also my 100th post on BobbleHeadBaby.com.  Thanks for sticking around everyone who is still reading!

This morning we went to Alethea’s nine month well baby check up.  After checking her height/weight/head size, the doctor told me her current stats are: Height – 27 inches, Weight – 20 lbs 14oz, Head Circumference – 44.5 cm.  That means Alethea has dropped to the 25th percentile for height while maintaining 90th for weight.  Her head circumference is a respectable 75th percentile.

Alethea’s big first this month was her first time walking around while holding on to furniture.  She started doing that in the middle of the month and has rapidly been perfecting it ever since.  Most of her day is spent on her feet now, since she will only get down to crawl when she needs to get to the next piece of furniture she wants to stand up on.  I’m continually amazed what she can use to pull herself up, closet doors, tall pieces of furniture, even air vents on the wall!  I have yet to see her stand up using only a bare wall, but I’m thinking that may just be because there is nothing interesting enough on a bare wall to entice her into climbing it.

We reached another milestone this month that isn’t nearly as exciting.  Alethea somehow learned to throw fits when she doesn’t want to slow down from her playing long enough to get dressed, get her diaper changed, take a nap, put her coat on, take her medicine, etc.  It makes each day feel like a bit of a wrestling match and I am trying to strike a balance between making the above activities fun and distracting without going overboard in making Alethea feel that everything we do during the day must be to her exact specifications (I wonder where she gets that from…)

On a more pleasant note, Alethea has learned to wave “bye-bye” and it is cute to watch her interacting and communicating more and more with the people in her life.  She sometimes says ‘hi’, ‘da-da’, ‘mama’ and ‘go’ at appropriate times, but since she also says them in contexts where they don’t work, I’m still not sure if they are ever on purpose yet.

Overall, this month has been a little rough since for most of it Alethea was not sleeping or eating well.  She was also drooling a lot, although no new teeth came through.  However, when the doctor looked into her mouth today, our pediatrician noticed that there are four swollen lumps on Alethea’s upper gum line, so it looks like we are expecting four teeth soon, which is probably the reason behind the sleeping and eating regression.  The past few days/nights have been better on both counts, so hopefully we’ll have a little respite from teething for the time being.

I guess to sum up, this past month has been tiring.  Having tantrums and teething to contend with at the same time has not made me feel like the mother of the year.  Still, Peter and I are both enjoying playing with Alethea more since she is a lot more interactive and coordinated enough to enjoy more physical play like dancing and being tossed into the air.  Just tonight she was “jumping” (with a little help from me) and she thought that was outrageously funny.

Well, I think that about covers it.  Thanks again for reading!