9 months!

Henley will be 9 months tomorrow! So hard to believe! She's doing great. She stands on her own, as in gets from seating to a squat to standing straight up- very similar to Juliana. Hasn't taken steps yet, but we think it will be anytime (eek!). Meanwhile she is a fast crawler and loves the mobility.

She will wave her arm and say "ba ba" for bye-bye. She surprised me the other day by doing it without being prompted when we headed out the door to leave for school in the morning. Within the last 2 weeks she finally started saying "Da da" and "Ga ga". Brian was pretty excited :-) She's been saying "ma ma" for awhile.

For 2 weeks at school, she was eating one "meal" of about 2 oz, and just this past week she graduated to 2 meals of about 2 oz each. She loves butternut squash, pears, and Plum Organics pouches. I've made some of our own purees (not nearly to the same scale as we did with Juliana), but I'm also trying to realize that "baby food" is just as good as what I can make depending on my available time. She's not a huge fan of sweet potatoes, much to my surprise, so I have more of those, but I'll mix them with vegetables as she's not a huge fan of peas or carrots at this point in time.

Most days she falls asleep in the car on the way home and pretty seamlessly transitions to her crib (Juliana would wake up immediately whenever the car stopped). If she's awake, however, we'll typically try bath time with both girls or let Henley join us for dinner in her high chair and let her chew on some puffs. She has started saying "mo mo" and shaking her arms when she wants more- we give her one at a time because otherwise she puts too much in her mouth and chokes.

I've been observing how Henley learns compared to Juliana. Whenever Juliana saw something new, she would immediately put it into her mouth. Henley, on the other hand, carefully picks it up, turns it all around, switches hands, then she'll shake it in one hand, shake it in the other hand, and THEN she'll put it in her mouth. Maybe our books will survive Henley compared to all the ones Juliana chewed on ;-)

A week and a half ago I sprained my SI joint in my back and was immobile. Brian took over the role of "Mom" plus carrying me around the apartment and helping me get ice, giving back rubs, and shuttling me to the doctor. So night time nursing has become a thing where he gets Henley and brings her to me where I'll just stay laying down and put her laying on top of me. Ever since, Henley as settled back into her normal sleeping pattern of nursing 2 times a night between 4-5 hours stretches. For 3 weeks prior, she was waking up every 3 hrs to nurse, but we think she had a lot going on cognitively and figuring out how to pull up on things. I'm now feeling more mobile (thank goodness!), but still trying to take it easy as leaning over to change a diaper, lay Henley in the crib, or rock her to sleep are very taxing for me right now.

She's such a pleasant, sweet, BUSY baby. We are definitely enjoying seeing her little personality emerging, and I love seeing her interactions with Juliana (although mostly we're telling Juliana to be gentle, and give Henley back her toy, and get out of her face, etc, haha poor Juliana).