9 Month Update

*She weighs 18 lbs 13 oz (45th) and is 29 in (85th) long.

*She is still in size 2 diapers, but needs a 3 at night and it won’t be long before we make the switch.

*We just made the switch to 9 month clothes.  She all of a sudden got really tall for her 6 month pants, which I think was an indication of shooting up to the 85th percentile on length.  She is in 12 month sleepers with plenty of room to fill them out!

*Sleeping is still the same.  At home she takes two good 2 – 3 hour naps, but at school she takes about an hour to an hour and a half nap after lunch and then she is put back down for at least another hour when we get home at 5.  Still not my favorite thing to do, but she needs her sleep.  At night she goes down between 7 – 7:30 and we get her up at 7 in the morning on school days.

*She has her first ear infection.  She has had a pretty nasty cold now for a while and when I took her in last time they couldn’t find any infection and told me that the virus just needed to run its course.  There is nothing worse than a sick baby that you can’t do anything for.  We have a humidifier and we’re using saline and a bulb, but other than that, we can’t do much for her.  She went in for her 9 month check up and I mentioned that she hadn’t really gotten any better and they checked and she had bilateral ear infections.  I don’t know what it is with the Collins family and their sneaky ear infections.  Both Anna and Jack have had multiple ear infections over the past few months and there was never a symptom of any of them. 

*Homegirl has 8 teeth.  She has four on top and four on the bottom.  I felt like she got her first two a good few months ago and then BAM! – 6 more teeth.  Other than gnawing on everything, she hasn’t really been too fussy.  Since she’s been sick its hard to tell what is teeth fussing and what is general ‘I don’t feel good’ fussing, but she certainly has been a trooper.

*She is COMPLETELY mobile.  She can crawl like a maniac now and she is pulling up.  She can get where she wants to go and get there pretty quickly.  This has been so fun because I can sit down on the ground and she will crawl up into my lap.  I feel so loved when I know she wants to come to me.

*Along with crawling comes getting into things she isn’t supposed to.  We decided that we would tell her no and if she did it anyway, we would just squeeze her hand.  The only thing she has really gotten in trouble for is picking up and putting the dog bones in her mouth.  She we would tell her no and squeeze her hand.  She would cry and get a pouty lip and then move on to something else.  After a few days of that, she’ll now crawl up to it, stop and sit on her butt looking at it, and then crawl right past it.  Or we’ll just say her name and she’ll turn and look at us and start smiling and crawling towards us.  She is a mess.

*She really reaches out now and can let you know pretty quickly if she wants to go to someone or not.  It makes me so happy when someone has her and she leans out to me, but I try not to get my feelings hurt when I hold my hands up and she turns away.  At least we have a little girl that knows what she wants in life!

*She is almost completely through with baby food.  We are going to finish them out because we have them, but we are almost fully onto table food.  She loves bananas, mandarin oranges, sweet potatoes, and she’ll eat green beans and peas.

*Apparently at school they do a lot of singing and dancing.  Just within the past week or so, she’ll start rocking herself on her butt when you sing and it looks like she is dancing with everything she’s got!  She gets a huge smile on her face when I sing ‘Kuckaburra’.  Not sure why she loves that one, but it’s a fave!

*She LOVES reading.  She loves ‘Brown Bear’ right now and a cheesy little $1 book we got from somewhere called ‘Goodnight, Sleepyhead’.  Ja and I both have this memorized because she wants to read this one every night.  If you try to read something else she will stare at that book in the pile until you lean her over and then she’ll go right for it.

*We have our night time routine going pretty well.  We get her into her PJs, give her her last bottle, brush her teeth, read ‘Sleepyhead’ and then it is sleep sack, bobo, and her paci.  Out like a light.

*She has so much hair now that we had to get a brush and comb set.  After a bath we have to comb her hair down and it will be all over the place!

*I have always moaned in my sleep and Caroline has inherited that from me.  You can hear her in her room just moaning away and you check on her and her eyes are closed and she is still fast asleep.  This is why we haven’t used a monitor in months because she doesn’t sleep very quietly!

*We had to drop her crib because we went in there one time and she was sitting up and then the next time we went in there and she was beginning to pull up on the rails.  So we dropped it all the down to the lowest setting.  It was crazy to be taking that crib apart because the last time we had messed with it was just about a year before when we were putting it together and I was only 5 months pregnant.  It is crazy how quickly things change!

*Caroline is the smiling-est, happiest, best baby we could have ever asked for.  People ask us all the time if she is always that happy and that content just sitting and playing and I always tell them that she is.  She can even be pushed past what I think she can handle and she hangs right in there.  We are so lucky and so blessed to be able to be her mommy and daddy!

Pulling up and showing off her skills – and that cute butt!

We have been so lucky.  The boys have been SO good with her and they love to do drive-bys and lick her really quickly before they get in trouble.  They let her pat them and pull on them and they don’t move. 

Jack and Caroline LOVE each other.  It is so awesome that they are so close in age and get to grow up together.

Jack has been quite a brute when it comes to Caroline, but she is learning how to hold her own.  She is getting steamrolled here, but don’t let that fool you!

The girl does love a book – and being a girl, she can sit still long enough to have one read to her.  This was a fleeting moment when Mom was here where Jack was sitting down and reading the book, too.

She loves turning the pages.  She used to just peak around the page to look at what was back there and then she figured out that she can turn the page and see it all!

We still don’t have a high chair and I think this is how things will be.  This booster seat has been perfect and is easy to clean.  It’s doubly fun when Jack comes over to hang out.

This is the reason her crib got dropped!  She is quite proud of herself when we walk in and she is standing up in her crib.

When she was a baby she was never very fond of the bath when we would lay her down.  Now that she can sit up on her own and actually play, she LOVES bath time.  We stick her in the shower with one of us when we need to do a quick clean, but she loves getting in the tub and playing. 

Getting her crawl on.  She is a pretty quick little sucker!

We don’t let her watch TV a lot, but when we put on Baby Einstein or the Bubble Guppies or anything else made for her age, she is mesmerized.  We had this bean bag chair in her room just as decoration and Ja put her in it just to see what she would do.  She laid there for about 15 minutes and just watched TV and kicked her feet.  She was maxin’ and relaxin’!

Tell me that is not the cutest face!  I love when she smiles and scrunches her nose up.  She already has such a little personality and I’m so excited to watch her grow into it even more.  I keep thinking that every stage is so much fun and it just keeps getting better!  We love you, Sweet Caroline!