1. Cloud B Twilight Constellation Night Light: We’ve had this for ages, but never really used it consistently for bedtime until this month. We eased the girls into their bath time routine by dimming the lights and turning on this night light for the twin who wasn’t being bathed. After bath time, we brought the turtle with us into the living room where the girls like to look up at the stars and moon projected on the ceiling as they drink their bottles. I think Jake and I enjoy looking at the stars just as much as they do! The best part is, we are borrowing this from a friend, so it didn’t cost us anything.
2. Tunnels: We bought two tunnels at a garage sale for $5 and it’s one of the best purchases we’ve ever made! The girls love crawling through them and so does Bandit.
3. Fisher Price Walker: Another borrowed toy, hooray! Once the girls began pulling themselves up to stand this month, they were all over this walker. They couldn’t walk with it yet, but loved pulling up on it and playing with all the little switches and buttons.
4. Star Kids Snack and Play Travel Tray: This was such a lifesaver on our road trip to Utah. I put some finger foods and puffs on the tray for the girls to eat/play with during the ride and it helped keep them busy. It was also useful for keeping small toys on their lap. Too bad I was so sleep-deprived when we returned from vacation that I stuck the trays in the washer without thinking about it and believed them to be ruined (they have cardboard inserts that are now soggy). We cut open the fabric, pulled out the soaked inserts and are going to cut some cardboard of our own to put inside. I guess not all is lost.
5. Fisher Price Activity Table: Yet another borrowed toy…so worth it! This was by far the girls’ favorite thing this month. Every time they woke up from a nap, they would immediately wiggle out of my arms to go play with this thing. Samantha’s favorite part was the little computer screen that flips up and down…she would push Amelia away from it if she had to so she could play.
6. Munchkin Backseat Car Organizer: We bought two of these little mesh organizers for our road trip to Utah and they made things so much more organized on the ride. I kept my phone, snacks, bottles, wipes and anything else we needed at the ready. So much better than keeping everything in bags at my feet on my floor.
7. Tiny Love Take Along Arch: We actually bought two of these a while ago for the girls’ high chairs when they were first sitting up in them to keep them busy while I cooked in the kitchen. They worked great for the car too. In addition to the toys already on the arch, the girls liked swatting little rings and dangly toys we put on there. I suppose it was better than staring at themselves in the back-seat mirror for the ten-hour trip (although, they did enjoy looking at their reflections for a little while!)
9 Month Stats:
Samantha: 24 pounds 2 oz. 30.5 inches tall…the first month Samantha didn’t gain substantial weight. Still above the 95th percentile in height and weight though!
I may have mentioned before that I LOVE GRAPHS. The Baby Connect app on my phone is where I keep track of all the girls’ info at doc appointments and it creates so many cool graphs/bar charts for me. Baby Connect–you are my hero.
As you can see, Samantha’s projectile is pretty much straight up. (Hers is the blue line).
Amelia: 21.4 pounds 29.5 inches tall (above the 95th percentile for height, 85th for weight). It was the same thing with Amelia; she didn’t gain much weight or height from her 8 month birthday (hers is also the blue line).
At Samantha and Amelia’s nine month appointment, our ped said the slow-down in weight gain was totally normal and due to the fact that the girls were eating more solids/less bottles and moving around a ton. (Obviously, we weren’t worried anyway since the girls are so chubby and tall!) I also think Amelia lost a little bit of weight when she was on antibiotics after her ear infection. She was having diarrhea a few times a day due to all that good bacteria being killed off from the antibiotics. Not fun.
9 Month Firsts and Milestones (November 11-December 11, 2013):
-Started saying “dada”
-Tried cheerios and loved them…mostly played with them at first, but eventually got coordinated enough to pick them up and eat them.
-Started finger foods and loved them–first time eating chicken (didn’t like so much), pasta, cheese, and steamed/cut-up sweet potato, carrots, pears, etc.
-Began hating being spoon-fed toward the end of the month
-Pulled up to standing
-Second road trip to Utah
-First time going inside a McDonald’s while on our road trip
-First Thanksgiving
-First time trying turkey and pumpkin pie
-First time seeing snow
-First time playing piano at Grandma’s
-First ear infection 🙁
-Loved to pull up on furniture, the gate at the top of the stairs, bookcases, and anything they could get their hands on
-Loved exploring every room and pulling out everything from drawers and shelves. Favorites included mommy and daddy’s dresser drawers, baby room drawers, pulling diapers and folded blankets out of baby closet, pulling books of baby bookcase and trying to pull down the trash can in the laundry room
-Loved “helping” with the laundry
-Loved looking at themselves in the full-wall mirror in the master bedroom
-Loved playing with pots and pans, spoons, and tupperware in the kitchen
Samantha:
Perfected her crawling and moved up to advanced crawling
Loved pulling up on the tub
Loved crawling after Bandit
Hated diaper/clothing changes
Got her second tooth!
Amelia:
Started crawling at the beginning of the month and graduated to advanced crawling by the end
Loved clicking her tongue after she heard daddy make a funny noise
Hated spoon feeding
Loved crawling around with socks or wipes in her mouth
Hated wearing hats
Hated diaper changes
Still two teeth
Fave foods:
Samantha: pasta, cheese, prunes, pears, sweet potato, butternut squash, noodles, squished meatballs
Amelia: pasta, cheese, pears, Cheerios, sweet potato, bread, noodles
Feeding: Lots of finger foods this month and less purees. The Babycook remained super useful as I used it to steam all their fruits and veggies to be cut up. The girls took in less bottles this month, but more at a time, drinking about 5-6 ounces every 3-4 hours during day for a total of about 25 ounces each (I was pumping 3, sometimes 4 times a day, so they were getting about 70% formula and 30% breastmilk). The week they were sick with their ear infections/had tummy troubles from the antibiotics, they ate practically nothing…a few bottles, some cheerios, bananas, bread and pedialyte were about all they would eat.
Diapers: Size 4
Clothes: Samantha wore anything from 12-18 months depending on the brand, while Amelia wore anything from 9-18 months.
Sleep: 3 naps a day, usually 1 hour to 1.5 hours each
Bed time: 7-7:30 p.m.
Wake-up time: The girls woke up a lot at night this month! They would go right back to sleep once we popped the pacifier back in most of the time, but sometimes they wanted to be held or rocked back to sleep, and occasionally, they’d want a bottle. We definitely created some sleep associations that are now hard to get rid of! Usually, it was one or the other who was up…the girls definitely planned it out beforehand, I’m sure. Most of the time, it seemed like the girls had been practicing sitting/standing/crawling in their sleep because we’d find them crying, but mostly asleep while crawling around their crib or standing up. After one or two nightly episodes of waking up and falling right back asleep, their real wake-up time for the day was between 6:30-7 a.m.
Favorite songs:
Twinkle twinkle little star
Do as I’m doing
Castle on a Cloud
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Los Pollitos Dicen
Head Shoulders Knees and Toes
Favorite books:
They completely tore up/destroyed their beloved Wiggly Caterpillar book, so we had to find some new favorites which were more durable!
Peek-a-Who
Where’s Spot
Madeline
Guess Who
Favorite Games:
Itsy Bitsy Spider
This Little Piggy
Pat-a-Cake
Dancing Daddy
Flying Trapeze
Month 9 was our first month with both girls fully mobile, so to sum up in three words it was crazy, exhausting fun!
Lots of love,
