Baby Autumn has reached 9 months old. She’s come on leaps and bounds in the last month and she’s now able to do a lot more than she was before. She’s developing her own little personality and mind and she’s not afraid to tell you what she likes and what she doesn’t like. She’s not as chilled as Austin was but then maybe she has to shout a bit more to get the attention! Always the case with 2nd babies.
Autumn – Month 9
Sleeping
We’ve found that Autumn became a bit of a pain during the night with the lost dummy situation so we’ve binned the dummies. It hasn’t been that much of a deal as she didn’t often have a dummy outside of nap times and so she hasn’t missed it much. The only time she seems a bit bothered is when she goes off for her daytime naps. There are a few cries and shouts before she falls off to sleep. She’s now sleeping well over 12 solid hours at night. We put her down generally about 6:30 pm and she sleeps until around 7 am unless she gets woken up by the noise in the house.
Her naps have become a bit of a pain though. She generally goes down for around 30 – 45 mins two to three times a day. She clearly is quite tired when she wakes up from her naps, especially the lunchtime one, as she wakes up and starts screaming and crying and can’t get herself back off to sleep. I’ve tried lots of different tactics to see if I can get her to have a bit of a longer nap at lunchtime. She’s had a longer nap maybe once or twice in the last couple of months and she wakes up so much happier.
Feeding
She’s still not that interested in eating solids. She plays with the food and we’ve had some success with yoghurt, omelette, toast and curry. My husband and I have been batch-cooking lots of hand-held food so she can continue to try and feed herself. She is a little more open to spoon-feeding but will generally only have a couple of tiny spoonfuls before pushing the spoon away. She’s okay about having a small drink of water from a sippy cup, at first she was quite disgusted when she realised it wasn’t milk.
Milk-wise, we’ve kept her at the four 10oz bottles per day as she isn’t eating much in the way of solids and I don’t want her to be hungry. She nearly always finishes the bottles, so rather than increase them I’ve just been offering her more solids.
Nappies
We’ve switched to using size 4 nappies during the day and night time. She will go all night in a nappy without a leak as she is only having one bottle at 6 pm and then a fresh nappy to go to bed in.
Mental and Physical Development
Autumn is quite a vocal baby and she picks up on the sounds of words quite quickly. She’s been able to say banana and get all the syllables which I was impressed by. She’s been trying to say ball as well. She’s always chatting (and shouting away). She gets louder and louder if she’s trying to attract someone’s attention.
She’s still really into musical toys, but also loves playing with the toy food from Austin’s kitchen. She picks them up and inspects them thoroughly – although rarely does she put them in her mouth.
She’s sitting up confidently now and will sit up for quite a long period. I still pop a cushion behind her as sometimes she topples over. She loves sitting up as it means she has more access to the toys she wants to play with and also can lean forward and reach more toys. If she topples sideways, she can manoeuvre herself so she is on her tummy. She doesn’t move much whilst she is there though.
She’s very capable with her hands now. Passing toys from one hand to the other, holding and throwing a ball. She’s also very intentionally dropping toys off her highchair tray for me to pick up. She’s now able to wave goodbye when people are going and will clap if you ask her to. She also blows kisses to people if they blow them to her – it’s very cute!
We’ve cut two teeth at the bottom. She was a bit miserable for a couple of days so I thought they were coming and then they did. We did use some Ambasol liquid to help her with the pain which she didn’t like putting on but it did seem to help her.
She’s such a tall girl that I’m already retiring some of her 9 – 12 month clothes. Mainly things like dungarees. I think she’s long on the top and bottom, so dresses are fine, but trousers and sleepsuits are an issue. Luckily she has lots of girl cousins who are good for hand-me-downs.
Thanks for popping by to read this. I’ll be back next month with the next update when Autumn will be 10 months old.
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