9 Months - Time For Change (Updated)

My baby girl has now been my baby girl for as long as I was pregnant with her.

Wow.

Today Kaycie flipped the calendar to 9 months old. We went to her check up and she's been deemed perfectly healthy and a child giant. Her weight didn't go up as much as I thought it would, she was just under 21lbs which puts her in the 85 percentile. That's the first time she's been under the 90th percentile since she was born, and I'm sure all the extra exercise from crawling around looking for trouble helped! She measured in at 30 inches, which was off the chart. Literally, doc said they called it "greater than 95th percentile." That explains the jump to size 18 month pants a couple of weeks ago.

She has done so much in the past month, it's hard to capture it all. She had her first lesson about hats. Hats are defined as anything you can put on your head. She didn't much like her first lesson.

Later lessons went much better. She liked this hat, probably because it matched her outfit so well.

She also had the opportunity to hang out with two of her namesakes, Aunt Kay and Sharonda (also a Kay). I think Kaycie is going to find that she has been named after quite a few amazing women.

Since she's started crawling we have been having all kinds of fun playing chase around the house. Kaycie usually catches me, which means standing up beside me while I'm on my hands and knees, and beating me in the back. I'll cry out, "Attack!" and she'll usually respond with a battle cry of, 'AAAAAHHHH!" It's ridiculously funny.

She is also getting into trouble going and coming. She loves to pull up on things that aren't sturdy and a we've taken a few tumbles. Greg and I have decided that our goal as parents is to keep as much of her blood inside her as possible. I haven't felt like I've done a very good job of that this past month, as she took two spills that resulted in busted lips. The first one was pretty bad, not long after she started pulling up she tried to pull up on our bed by grabbing the sheet, slipped and hit the bed rail with her face. There was much crying and more blood than I care to think about now. I think that was her first lesson that mobility is a dangerous thing. I wish I could protect her better, but she has a little bit of an adventurous spirit that sometimes leads to pulling a side table down on her head. These things are going to happen.

She's also started standing up for several seconds on her own without support. I wonder if I will be writing about her walking in my next update post...

Her favorite toys right now are balls, anything that plays music that she can dance too (that girl LOVES to dance!), the thermostat, light switches, door knobs, and the curtains over the back door which are perfect for peek-a-boo. Her nemesis is wash cloths. She like to bend them to her will then use them as weapons. And of course to play peek-a-boo.

The next few weeks will likely prove to be a challenge for us all. She's still not sleeping well most night and that's going to have to change. We're going back to gremlin rules - no feeding after midnight. She's not going to like it, since she's been having a mid morning snack between 1 and 4am most mornings. Doc said it time for her to suck it up, in part because it's time to lose the bottle. Kaycie is very attached to her bottle. Like, time for a 12 step program attached. So as we move her off formula and onto milk over the next few weeks we're also moving her off the bottle and onto a sippy. She's been drinking water from a sippy with her meals for a couple of months and likes it fine, but it's not her bottle and she doesn't usually drink as much from it as she will a bottle. I don't know how she will take to milk - she's been on soy formula because she had a lot of tummy issues with milk early on - but we're will be finding out tomorrow morning. Hopefully it'll work out fine and we can expand her diet to include all kinds of fun dairy. She needs to have some ice cream! And mac and cheese, and just plain cheese, and yogurt... So many new things waiting for her. Oh, and she's pretty much done with baby food. She's a big girl, she wants to feed herself things like carrot sticks and diced fruit and sweet potato chunks and my toast. I can't imagine how I'll get enough food in her to survive once we're done with formula. It takes her forever to eat!

I can't believe the first time I posted this I forgot to mention her four new teeth, all of which arrived within 48 hours of each other. And her doc said she thinks a couple more are on their way. Don't kids start popping teeth out without even thinking about it at some point? Let's hope so, because Kaycie will have a mouth full in about a week at this rate. AND didn't mention that she's finally started babbling. She was down with the "ma-ma-ma" a couple of weeks ago, but then she learned the "bwa-bwa-bwa" and the "ma-ma-ma" was so last week. I've been desperately trying to get her to do the "da-da-da' but she's not into that yet.

For the record, I went back and updated that last paragraph (twice) not because I really think anybody cares, but because this is my record of her progress, and the way I'm keeping up with all the new things she's learning. I usually do these later at night after she's in bed, so I'm exhausted and forget a lot. When I think of important things later, I'll go back and add them for my own record.

Finally, I have about a dozen posts I want to do about things that are pretty much not at all related to Kaycie, things like trying to sell our house and the crazy things related to that. Things like the fact that she's napping well enough for me to be reading some great books again. Things like the fact that my parents bought a motor home, and I think that's awesome. Things like the fact that I've been off my ADD meds for two years now and how I'm managing. Things like how we're certifiably insane for planning a trip to Disney World for Kaycie's first birthday (we're soooo taking a set a grandparents!). I need to make a point, at least once a week, to reserve a nap time to sit and write. I miss blogging so much, but it's habit that it's too easy to fall out of when you're not sitting at a desk at work all day! =)

I can't leave a Kaycie update post with that, so instead I'll leave with one of my favorite pics of the past month. She's almost perfected her pitiful:

Insight Into the Mind of a Kaycie

Things Kaycie Finds Offensive:

1. A neatly folded pile of washcloths
2. Rings (or stars) properly stacked on a stacker
3. Books neatly lined up on a bookshelf
4. Anything stored or organized in a basket, bucket, bag, or box
5. Order

Things Kaycie Finds Pleasing:

1. Chaos

This sheds some light into the Edwin vs Ian debate.*

It also makes me wonder if she would go totally insane if I put a stack of neatly folded washcloths inside a box with a ring stacker on top.

*We have left it up to Kaycie as to which of the Emmer boys she chooses to marry, Edwin, the brilliant leader of the Forces of Good, or his younger brother Ian, evil genius, leader of the Forces of Evil, and future Grand Ruler of the Universe.

8 Months - Not So Little Anymore

My baby girl isn't a baby anymore. She's a big girl, eating her finger foods and exploring her world without reservation. Last time I posted she was rolling around like crazy. That lasted another week, by Father's Day she was crawling a couple of steps at a time, mostly motivated by the idea of getting the pup. Within two more days she was crawling like she was born to it. She immediately started pulling up to stand and trying to glide along the furniture. To be honest, crawling is just a means to an end. Standing up is where it's at!

There are a couple of benefits to crawling. Like playing with her new toy:

She also likes to chase me around boxes in the floor. Yes, we are packing up our house to have new carpet installed and hopefully sell the house so we can move, thus the pile of boxes everywhere that are sooooo tasty and fun. Everything is an adventure now. Most days I message Greg a picture of something new she's gotten into. I should do a post of just those pictures, but the camera on phone is pretty bad, so the quality of those pictures is awful on the big screen!

Kaycie has also quit sleeping well over the past couple of weeks. Dang 8 month sleep regression/growth spurt. She's been waking up 2-4 times a night starving. The pup isn't helping; he's woken her up the past two night with his crazy howling from the living room. I don't know what I'm going to do with all these growth spurts. She's already in 12 month clothes!

We finished our music class in June and I've already found a new class for fall, this one in Clinton instead of downtown Jackson. I haven't decided whether to register her for another music class (she loved the last one) or a sign language/music class. I want to get her in a Mother's Morning Out program where she can make some friends, but the only one I've found in Clinton won't take kids under 1, so I have her on the waiting list for November. Hopefully they'll have something open by then.

It's amazing how quickly she's growing and learning to do new things. I can't wait to see what this month brings. We go back to the doc for a checkup on her 9 month birthday, so we'll have another weight and length check then as well as some possible dietary changes. The last time Greg got on the scale with her she was a little over 20lbs. My baby girl is getting so big!

Months Six and Seven

I would like to start with a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mom, who share's Kaycie's 7 month birthday. And it was one year ago to the day that we had the ultrasound that told us we were having a girl. They did not mention that she would be a cutapotamus, but I suppose they didn't know.

That said, I can't believe I skipped the six month update. I didn't realize how quickly Kaycie's been changing until I went back and reviewed her 5 month update and thought that it seemed like forever ago. At her six month checkup Kaycie was a little over 18 pounds and measured 27 inches. That's in the 90th and 95th percentiles respectively. She's a giant of a child. She's already outgrown her infant carrier car seat, which was rated up to 20 pounds but her feet were dangling off the edge, so we upgraded to a convertible big girl car seat last month.

At the end of April we went to the beach. It was sooo much fun despite the bad weather that kept us off the sand. We stayed at Ft. Morgan (as always) and created new chapters of the Kaycie Fan Club at Tacky Jack's 2 in Ft. Morgan*, several places in Gulf Shores including Bahama Bob's, and in Pensacola, Foley, and Hattiesburg. We went to the zoo and she got a huge kick out of watching the baby tigers. It appeared to be mutual, as the baby tigers kept stalking her through the fence. All four grandparents came down the last weekend we were there and we had an awesome time taking them to eat at our favorite spots and sharing our little slice of beachy heaven. Ironically, the week we were there was the week the oil spill started. When we left they were afraid of having oil on the beaches the next week, but from what I understand it's just starting to arrive this week. I want to cry ever time I think about it. I want Kaycie to grow up loving that beach as much as Greg and I do, but I'm afraid it's going to be a long time before she gets to play in the sand there. That will not stop us from visiting, we still love to eat! In the best news of all, Kaycie magically started sleeping through the night on our third night there and has pretty much slept from 7pm to 6:30am every night since. (Excuse me while I pause to do a happy dance.)

Not only can she sit up like a pro now, she's also officially mobile. Not crawling, although she is DESPERATE to figure it out, but rolling around like cue ball on crack. She can very nearly fit under our new TV console, which is why if you come visit we have a giant stuffed animal and several pillows shoved under it. She has discovered a deep love for electrical cords. And computer cables. And anything else that might be close to the floor that she doesn't need to be eating. Heaven help me when she starts crawling. She's already mastered getting up on her hands and feet and rocking. I find her that way every single time I go to get her out of the crib. Except for the times I find her sitting up without assistance. And Greg swore she crawled one step to get a toy the other night. I don't doubt it.

She's mostly gotten over her fear of her grandfathers. Whew. She hung out in the back yard with her Papaw Hall one afternoon for like an hour. That is a huge relief.

At our last check in she was starting solid food, but shortly after I cut them out completely because she was having a lot of digestive issues. We started back the week she turned 6 months and it's been smooth sailing ever since. She'll eat anything I put on a spoon. At the 7 month mark I have a whole new list of things I can cook for her, so she'll be trying all kinds of new vegetables, brown rice, and get her first taste of chicken in the weeks to come. She's even drinking out of a sippy cup in her high chair! Sorta. If I help her hold it up. It's still a little heavy for her.

I've become a little more convinced that we're going to have a lefty on our hands. Back in March Lauren noticed that she seemed to have a left hand preference, but she was going back and forth between both hands depending on which was closer to the object. Since then I've noticed that when I feed her she always grabs the spoon with her left hand. And given the option she often chooses to hold things or pick them up with the left. Oh sigh. Her Papaw Butler is left handed. I hope that's not a sign! =)

Kaycie also got to meet her little cousin Braxtyn a few weeks ago. Braxtyn was born in January but has only been home from the NICU for a few weeks. They both seemed to get a kick out of staring at each other, and Kaycie was pretty interested in touching her. Just wait until the holidays, they'll both be getting into so much trouble!

I also started taking Kaycie to her first music class this month. It's a four week Kindermusic class at our church, but they do regular classes in the fall that I may sign her up for. She's really enjoyed the singing and dancing and staring at strangers. There are only a few kids in her class and she's the youngest and the only girl. I'm thinking about taking a stick next weeks to keep those boys away!

When I put her on the scale this morning she was just a smidge under 20 pounds. Such a big girl.

*We ate at Tacky Jack's 2 so much that one of the hostesses friended me on Facebook. We miss you, Marsha! Kaycie says hi!

Tales of the Totapotamus

My kid has this fascination with people in restaurants sweeping the floor ('cause you know she doesn't see that at home!). Today we were eating at Cane's and she was hanging the high chair at the end of the booth when I leaned over and said, "Hey Kaycie, I hate to tell you but there's a woman right behind you sweeping the floor!" Now I'm not suggesting anything here, but as soon as I said it she whipped her entire body around and stared in amazement at the woman sweeping the floor until we left.

Yes, I know I didn't post a six month update. I didn't think about it until this past week. I'll probably just wait and do a 6-7 combo, because that girl has been super busy learning new things over the past couple of months!