9 months

I have a long way to grow!

I was telling my hairdresser about my "young baby" when I realized he isn't a young baby anymore! He is an old baby now. Sniff, sniff! The ExerSaucer has joined the bouncy chair in the toy graveyard. Just another reminder of how fast he is growing. Caiden is a "developmental rock star" according to his doctor. No shots at this checkup, but they did draw blood. I think that was worse than the shots, poor little guy.

The 9 month stats:
Height: 29.5" (87%)
Weight: 22lbs 13oz (83%)
Head Circumference: 46cm (70%)

What a difference a few months make!

Activity: Crawling and standing are big around here. He is a fast little bugger and by the end of the day his little knees are all red. Well, only one of his knees... he has his own crawling style that involves using his right foot instead of his right knee.
He will stand up whenever he gets the chance. He doesn't need anything to pull up on anymore- he can stand up just using the support of a wall. Sometimes he lets go and will stand unassisted for 5-10 seconds.

Outlets are a Caiden magnet. Even though we've plugged them up, he will go and put his mouth over them. He has zero sense of self preservation.

We gave him this old laptop to play with a few days ago. It seemed like a great idea at the time, as he shows so much interest in our computers. However, later that day Dan fished the red tracker button (visible in the picture below, in the center of the keyboard) out of Caiden's mouth. We're not sure how long he was chewing on the thing, but it was at least a half hour. The laptop went right back into storage.

Caiden loves being bounced. He also loves playing peekaboo.

Teeth: The "is he teething" saga continues. We have yet to see any pearly whites in there, but the last week or two, Caiden always has fingers (or whatever else is handy) in his mouth. Time will tell.

He was even so desperate for something to chew on that he munched on my feet, right after I walked in the door from a bike ride. Gross.

He still doesn't seem to be interested in traditional teething toys, so we give him cool celery stalks or raw carrots to chew on sometimes. He seems to like it.

Food: Caiden has definitely developed  food-specific hunger. It used to be that if he was hungry, he was indifferent as to whether he was offered milk or food. Now he knows when he wants real food. He eats pretty much everything, although he prefers to mix it up at mealtime. A few bites of chicken, a few bites of peas, back to the chicken... etc. He'll get bored and uninterested otherwise. He seems to prefer veggies over most other food. We've been introducing spices and food with lots of flavor. He particularly likes paprika and pepper on his eggs, cinnamon in his squash, and chicken chili. He is getting better about self-feeding, we practice a little bit at every meal. (Other than that he is still spoon-fed).

Sleep: For most of this month, sleep was a great thing. Half of the time he would sleep all night (around 7pm to 6am), the other half of the time he would get up once in the 3-5am range. Lovely! Then, last week, he out of the blue reverted to his old routine: lots of wake-ups. But it is different- he wants to snuggle. That is very un-Caiden like (hmmm... teething??). We are still struggling with this, although last night was better so hopefully we'll be back to normal soon. Other than that, it takes him longer to fall asleep at bedtime than it used to. He has lots of fun standing, sitting down, standing... you get the idea. He also has fun "binkie tossing". We can hear it through the monitor, one binkie after the other crashing on the floor.

Water: Bath time is hit or miss. Sometimes he is okay with it, other times he spends the entire time trying to climb out. No matter his mood though, he is no longer okay with water over the head. I used to be able to dump a bunch of water over his head to get the shampoo out. I don't know what changed, but water touching his head in the bath now causes him to immediately rush to the edge, stand up, and try to grab on to me. And when we put him in a baby pool in our yard over vacation, he screamed bloody murder. This past Monday with Nanna Nan though, he seemed to be warming up to the idea of water at the Concord Country Club.