Crusin' for a Bruisin' (9 month summary)

It's been a while since I wrote up a summary of our day-to-day lives, so I figured since we are approaching Forest's *9 month* birthday, I'd go ahead and write up a little post novel. 

Forest is a funny guy. I just love watching him discover new skills and to see his face light up as if he has a bona fide superpower. And it seems that way to me as well because sometimes these things honestly show up out of no where, as if by magic. One day he’s laying on his back; the next he’s flopping onto his tummy.  Then he’s sitting. Then crawling. Then standing. Now cruising. Ya’ll know what comes next in this sequence, right? 

Lordy, I don’t even want to think about my baby getting around on two legs. He’s already a handful. Plenty of handfuls, actually. He is super independent , super smart, super curious (i.e. nosy) and super energetic. He sort of reminds me of someone else I know…

...and I learned from her that smart, energetic, independent and curious can lead to some major momma anxiety. Yes, walking is on the horizon, but for now Forest is content to cruise (or ‘furniture walk’ for those of you who don’t know the 6-12 month lingo). 

We laugh and tell him he’s “cruising for a bruising” all the time because once he started pulling up on furniture, suddenly his perfect baby complexion was constantly marred with scrapes and scratches. He quickly received his first boo-boo when he caught a coffee table to the nose. 

And it wasn’t long before he got his second boo-boo. Then this third, followed by his 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, etc. I’ve lost count by now. 

I have a feeling his face will always have some sort of imperfection from now until he’s 6 or 7 and that’s if we can escape toddlerhood without any permanent scars! 

I told y’all, he’s a handful. And on top of being smart, curious, energetic, and independent, he is also fearless and full of charm. I’m telling ya, it’s quite the combination! But it’s also super fun and I really wouldn’t trade him for any other baby in the world. 

These past few weeks have felt so much easier (knock on wood). He’s playing hard and sleeping hard and at the moment he isn’t teething too severely which is a nice change (though we can see an upper canine making its way through. Yikes!).   

His independence also makes my days a bit easier. He’s totally content to explore the baby-proofed areas of the house and practice pulling up and cruising on anything he can get his hands on.   

He also still loves his jumperoo which means that for the time being I can still steal 15 minutes away to take a shower/cook/do laundry while he blissfully (and safely) entertains himself. 

He’s talking up a storm and I’m pretty sure he’s intentionally saying ‘mom/momma’ (or maybe it’s ‘more’ since he always says it during meal times). Whatever he’s saying, it’s exciting to see him intentionally try to communicate verbally with us. He hasn’t started gesturing much (pointing, waving, etc) but he will give us high 5’s and will lift his arms up when he wants to be picked up. 

We’ve been working a bit with sign language (mostly ‘milk’ and ‘more’) but we’re pretty inconsistent so I doubt he learns much from us. 

We have just survived the dreaded 8-10 month sleep regression (KNOCK ON WOOD) where a combo of teething and pulling up in the crib leads babies to have more difficulty falling and staying asleep. 

We had a few night wakings and early mornings, but nothing as bad as I was expecting. Probably because he got  the majority of his teething over with before he learned that he could pull up in his crib.

Of course, he isn’t 10 months yet so there could be more where that came from, but I hope not. Sleeping through the night makes the whole family so much happier, but I know we aren’t out of the woods yet…

As far as his schedule goes, on a good day, he is generally waking up between 6:30/6:45 and eating a 6/7 oz bottle and 4 oz of solids (generally rice cereal mixed with fruit) for breakfast. We jog to the park and do our morning chores and he goes down for a 1-1.5 hour nap around 9:45. At 11ish he gets another 6/7 oz bottle and we usually have an outing whether that is a play date or running errands. 

Between 1:30-2 he goes down for another 1-1.5 hour nap (on a good day, of course). When he gets up he gets another 6/7 oz bottle and another 4 oz of solids plus finger foods. 

Jonathan usually gets home around 4:30 at which point we go to the park or play in the baby pool in the backyard depending on how hot it is outside. 

At 5:30 he gets abother 4 oz of baby food and some finger foods. We try to eat as a family so we are starting to give him appropriate table food more and more. He's been eating beans, sweet potatoes, bread, etc and is really good at self feeding and chewing. After dinner we either read or give him a bath. 

We try to bath him every other night unless he's unusually dirty for some reason. And he usually doesn’t get a bath if he’s been in the baby pool before dinner just because he has dry skin and we don’t want to complicate that by double-dunking him. Around 6:40 we get him all ready for bed, give him a final bottle and put him down to sleep around 7 pm and he hopefully sleeps for 11.5/12 hours (sometimes its more like 10.5/11 but as long as he's sleeping all night long I am not complaining!). 

I’m still struggling with patience, especially when he has a regression due to a new skill or teething. I hate not knowing what  to expect or how to plan my day but that’s parenthood, I guess. I’m really missing my Aberdeen life and having extra-curricular activities. Even when Forest was very young I was still active in book club, mahjong and AWA so I felt like I had an outlet to have some identity other than ‘Forest’s mom’. I’m actually attending my very first California book club tonight so I think that will be good for me to leave the house without Forest and talk about something other than baby food/sleep/poop/milestones/etc. 

Alright, well that was just a quick run down of how this baby business is going around the 9 month mark. Forest will hopefully have his 9 month guest post up later this week.