playing, parties, and penguins

Last weekend, Mae and I met her grandma and grandpa at the Children's Museum. After a quick lunch, we headed straight for the kids' play area. I put her in the super padded baby area with all the soft toys and she laid completely still and stared at me like I had insulted her. She was much happier when I picked her up and took her around the bigger kid areas. Her favorite area was the music room where there were lots of ways to make loud noises. I think we have a natural-born percussionist! She also loved and/or hated playing in the waterfall. She squealed with joy and/or terror!

Later that day, we tried out the baby swing for the first time. Mae LOVED it.

On Saturday, we went to Teal & Jon's gender reveal party and were thrilled to find out they are having a little girl! We also got to meet Courtney and Luke's little boy Everett for the first time. Mae liked playing with the other kids, but was much more interested in stuffing pink confetti in her mouth.

This past Friday, Mae had her 9 month check up. She gained almost a pound since her last doctor visit and finally passed the 15 lb mark! Her new pediatrician seems a little more relaxed about her weight and happy that she's stayed on one growth curve since about 6 months. Mae enjoyed her celebratory dinner of turkey burger bits, pieces of hamburger bun, shredded potato, and chunks of honeydew! We are still feeding her baby food, but offering bits of our table food during meal times. She also likes trying to eat things like dust bunnies and leaves.

We are trying to get a handle on the recent stretch of crazy weather. On Friday it was 83 degrees, and Mae enjoyed playing in the grass. The next day it was only 36 degrees! We went to the zoo to see the penguin parade where the penguins walk from through the zoo from one exhibit to another. It was so fun to see these waddling birds up close!

nine months of mae

Happy 9 months, sweet pea!!

This has been a month of many milestones for Mae. Here's an update on all her progress since our last update.

Milestone 1: Waving. Yes, it's just as adorable as it sounds. Now she likes to greet us with a wildly flapping arm!

Milestone 2: Kneeling. There's a little yellow ring attached to the top of this walker toy, and she just HAD to get it in her mouth. That was enough motivation to pull up from a sitting position!

Milestone 3: Pulling up to standing! Dan had fun putting her toys away in her fabric storage bins and watching her pull up on the sides. She did pretty well holding herself up, but got SO angry every time the flimsy box wobbled. She also loves standing at the back of the couch to look out the window, especially if Dan is outside at the grill!

Milestone 4: Getting herself into a sitting position. She has two methods. One involves laying on her side and pushing herself up until she is seated. The other involves getting onto all fours (also new this month!) and pushing back until she can get her butt behind her feet. This works well on carpet... not so well on hardwood. She spent a couple days sliding backwards on the floor before she figured out how to pull her legs forward on the slippery floor.

In addition to her new milestones, Mae is continuing to develop her skills from last month. She is still working on her crawling technique, and she can now get onto hands and knees and rock back and forth. Then she plops down on her belly and takes off at a speedy army crawl. She LOVES chasing me as I crawl around the rocking chair in her bedroom. I wait for her to catch up and give a fake scream of terror as soon as she rounds the corner and spots me. She also continues to improve her pincer grasp and loves picking up things like cheerios, pieces of fruit, and little bits of crud from the kitchen floor. (I mean... umm... my house is spotless.) She also sprouted 2 new bottom teeth this month, bringing her total to 8. If she continues at this rate, she'll have over 300 teeth by the time she's my age.

This month, Mae has started to enjoy reading books! Actually, not books so much as one particular book. Just "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" She picks it up, holds it, babbles at it, flips the pages, and then looks to me to read it. After reading it for the 20th time, I tried a different book. She flipped a couple pages, then angrily shoved it from my hand. Same response to 2 or 3 more books. Then I picked up "Brown Bear" again and she snuggled right into my lap for the whole story. She also tolerates "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Big Eric Carle fan.

I'm not sure how Mae's weight is doing, since we haven't had her nine month checkup yet. After speaking with a dietician at Children's who seemed pretty unconcerned about Mae's weight, we decided to switch pediatricians and get a fresh start with someone who will hopefully be more reassuring and less alarmist. We've also introduced soy formula and started weaning, which has taken a HUGE burden off my shoulders. Mae didn't resist the soy formula at all! I have to say... breastfeeding was crushing my soul. I have a million reasons why it wasn't working for us. I felt a huge amount of guilt giving it up, but I feel so much better now. I still nurse overnight, but all the pressure is off. Getting good news at Mae's next weight check will just be the final validation that we made the right choice. Fingers crossed.

January is usually a pretty quiet month, and I haven't written anything since her 8 month post! We had one busy weekend a couple weeks ago. Friday evening we got together at Ben and Jen's house for a play date. Mae had fun playing with her baby friends Anna and Elodie, and we got to meet Stacey and Raul's newborn boy Isaac! The next day, Dan, Christopher, Emily and I went to a talk by a Catholic author/speaker and Mae got the spend the whole day with Ollie and her grandparents!

Hopefully we'll have a few more activities this month and I won't wait quite so long to share our next update! Now here's the obligatory picture of Mae destroying her 9 month sticker: