Hellobee

For whatever reason, I’m feeling that the last few months of the girls’ first year are flying. Especially compared to the first few slow and exhausting weeks of the newborn stage, our days more recently are a bit of a blur. But a fun and amazing blur, to be sure!

Physical

Anyone who has been reading my monthly updates knows that I’ve been waiting for crawling for months. Well, I’m happy to report that we finally have crawlers!

Both of the girls were doing a lot of army crawling up until a week ago when overnight Audrey mastered the traditional crawl movement around her 9 month birthday. She is definitely on the move, and her newfound skill has made her even more curious about her physical capabilities. She is pulling to standing more, and more active and physical with her toys. Her current favorite activities are bouncing on daddy’s chest and/or crawling up and over his chest.

As for Lilly, I’m starting to think that she may be one of those army-crawler-to-walker babies. She has shown us an ability to crawl traditionally but she much prefers her army crawl. She is super quick with her army crawl, and she keeps up with her traditionally crawling sister, but she doesn’t seem to like to put those knees on the ground.

  
Lilly is a bit more hesitant with her crawling  |  Our Audrey is on the move!

Social

Over the past few weeks, the girls have gotten so much more interactive with us. One of my favorite songs to sing to them is “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and I usually choose “clap hands,” “stick out your tongue,” (blow raspberries), and “nod your head” as the actions. One night last week, I started singing this song after dinner to them and they both started clapping hands and blowing raspberries with me during the song (nodding the head still seems to be a challenging movement for them). This was beyond exciting for me, and for them as well. We all looked at each other and giggled at each other, and then of course we did the song again.

The same thing is now happening with books as well. For months, reading books to the girls was a one-way exercise of me reading to them as they sometimes listened, sometimes looked around the room, sometimes just bounced quietly in their bouncy chairs. But over the past month, they’ve started interacting so much more with their books. Their absolute favorite book right now is Pat the Bunny and it just tickles me so much when they lift the fabric to “play peekaboo” or touch their fingers to “daddy’s scratchy face.” They still don’t seem to understand how to “smell the flowers” but I don’t mind continuing to practice with them! In fact, I love it so much that I am now flirting with a Pat the Bunny theme for their first birthday party.

The girls love to “read” their books.

But not all is so wonderful on the social side. Lilly’s clingy-ness has not abated as much as I would have hoped. I feel very torn when she cries to be held, as I don’t want her to feel distress and yet I don’t want to encourage the fussiness either. Something tells me that I’m not the only new mom to feel this conflict!

Meanwhile, the girls’ increased levels of interaction means that they are super interested in whatever toy the other is playing with. This means a lot of crying and fighting over toys. Audrey is bigger and stronger than her sister, and not afraid of moving her body around to win a fight for a toy by sitting on her sister’s legs or arms. Obviously, we try to stop this and intervene in their toy arguments, but it’s also hard at times not to laugh out loud!

A rare moment of playing together with no tears.

As always, our nanny has been amazing with the girls over the past month. Probably the biggest highlight was a celebration of Dr. Seuss’s birthday complete with Cat in the Hat outfits, an art project, and green eggs and ham.

Happy birthday Dr Seuss!

I also love how she encourages them to safely explore everyday things that I often forget the girls don’t yet have experience with, such as snow. After a big snowstorm, she opened the sliding glass door to our deck and let the girls touch and feel snow. Lilly loved it but Audrey screamed at the coldness!

Last week the nanny embraced the girls’ first St. Patrick’s Day with facepaints and special outfits. She also served them toast spread with some special green-tinted cream cheese for lunch.

 The girls are turned into little leprechauns for their first St. Patrick’s Day.

Sleep
I recently wrote a blog post about our girls’ sleep progression here. Over the past month, sleep has continued well and we haven’t hit a 9-month regression (knock on wood!).

One notable change has been a slight shift in the afternoon nap. In the past, we would go to the girls as soon as they woke up from their naps. Now, we have a blocked two-hour rest time from 1-3 in the afternoon and even if the girls wake up, they are still to remain in their cribs.

Eating

The past month has marked a noticeable shift toward solids and self-feeding. We used to feed all breakfast and dinner via pureed baby food, mostly in pouches. The nanny has been using a baby-led weaning approach for lunches for quite some time, but now we are moving that direction for breakfast as well. We’ve stopped rice cereal for breakfast and instead she cooks them a meal and they feed themselves. At dinnertime, we are still using many pouches but we are starting to ramp down on them and based on Mrs. Dolphin’s recent blog post about family dinners, we will be looking to sit down with the girls for dinner together going forward.

We’ve also been aggressively pushing the sippy cup for feedings during the day with the goal of eliminating the bottle by 12 months. The girls are currently only using bottles for their morning and evening formula feedings; everything else is coming from a Zoli Bot straw cup. I have to admit that the day I packed up most of the bottles was bittersweet – sweet in the sense of gaining back some of my kitchen counter space, but bitter in the sense that my babies are babies no longer…

The girls are transitioning out of babyhood and moving into toddlerhood!