She's Nine Months Old

What is my girl up to this month? Let's start with the official stats from the pediatrician:

• Weight: 19 lbs (75th percentile)
• Height: 27 3/4" (60th percentile)
• Head circumference: 17 1/2" (80th percentile)

Oh my goodness, Olive is cute as a button. She's bouncy and happy. She's smiley. She has the most stick-up hair you've ever seen, and it just floats around her head. She's just a lovely baby.

She is *thisclose* to walking.She can stand completely unassisted for maybe ten seconds. She can walk at a pretty quick pace holding just one hand. She cruises along like she's been doing it her whole life. And crawling can get her all over before you even know she's moving.

She got her first two teeth. They came through on the same day, and they're growing in enough that you can actually notice them now.

She learned how to wave a few days ago, and it is so stinking cute. I am actually bragging about this new talent to strangers. As if they care. But seriously, it's cute. She flaps her arm, and when she gets excited, she starts flapping both arms. Then she starts bouncing and flapping all at once, with a huge smile. Soooo cute.

She can also give high fives, which is another great party trick.

I am fairly certain she knows the words "Mama" and "Dada" and associates them with the appropriate person. She definitely recognizes her own name, though she can't say it yet.

She can climb stairs, and has now fallen backwards off her first stair. Sad. (She was fine.)

Olive has officially weaned. Or rather, I have officially weaned her. We went down to just nursing in the morning and before bed. Then just before bed. Then it was becoming increasingly clear that she wasn't getting enough milk from me. It was also clear that I wasn't enjoying the biting or the clawing. So I started supplementing the nursing with a bottle every night, and after a couple weeks of this, decided to quit nursing altogether. Last night was the first night without any nursing or pumping, and it's all going fine. Surprisingly, I'm not even that sad about it. A little sad. But I know I'm doing the right thing--the right thing for us, right now. I look back at Milo at this age, when I refused to give him any formula because I was so brainwashed to think it was bad for him. But his weight hadn't been increasing enough, and he had dropped into the 5th percentile. Olive is now 75th percentile, and while any number of factors could be at work here, I attribute the difference mainly to exclusively offering breastmilk vs. breastmilk + formula.

Olive sometimes has stranger anxiety. She cries when someone she doesn't know wants to hold her. She hadn't seen Grandma and Grandpa for a couple of weeks, and she didn't want to go to them at first. Thankfully, Grandma offered her a bottle and a snuggle and all was well.

What else is there to say? I adore her. And I don't know how the past nine months flew by so quickly. Can it really be time to start thinking about her birthday party? Better get a board going on Pinterest...