William is 9 Months Old

William is down right happy to be around and is content to do whatever.  He really rolls with the chaos of our life and doesn’t take a smile off his face with whatever we throw at him, well most of the time! 

William is down right crazy about his brother and sister!  He loves trying to keep up with them and this month with his crawling and standing he is becoming more able to participate in their play.  A couple weeks ago, while I cleaned up from dinner (Mike was on a work vacation) the three of them were sitting outside and Elin said “let’s make a circle” it was about the cutest thing I have seen. William is starting to babble and “talk” more and more.  His play is no longer silent and is filled with strings of vocal play.  The latest favorite is using his bottom lip to blow raspberry sounds. He also still uses a specific sound to for me or to tell us he needs help.  He has a lot of “ahs” and “ab ab abbas.”  He just started to wave “hi” with lots of prompting.  It is fun to hear hi long strings of babble and the stories he tells us.

He has spent this month perfecting his crawling  and has started to cruise along furniture and loves his ability to get around and go where he wants.  He also loves to play in a kneeling or semi kneeling/bum siting position or with her legs off to the side.  He's still getting the hang of walking behind toys, but when he is up and moving he is as happy as can be.  He loves to go to the back windows watch outside…with the grass finally growing in a bit better he is now able to go outside and crawl around too. 
He is able to get down from standing without just needing to let go and plop.  Such a relief and make makes his standing and cruising along furniture much less dangerous.  Another big step in the movement world has been him mastering the stairs and going up them.  This makes it a little more difficult around here and sooner than later we have to get the baby gate installed!

This month William really took off with eating.   He has even started to get mad when the spoon is not in his mouth fast enough!  He likes a few of the baby food pouch blends we have tried and will eat the whole pouch if you let him.  I would say that he gets about 75% in his mouth and the rest is a big mess as he likes to help with his spoon!  We have started to give him soft finger foods and he thinks they are ok.  Most of what we are eating I am able to cut smaller and try to give to him, he seems to think being like us in this respect, is the best!   William continues to have a rash or pimple like spots around his mouth, nose and sometimes eyes.  I had tried to put a little dairy back into my diet (to my stomachs dismay) and started to notice that his face also got worse.  Nothing I tried topically to put on it helped and I thought that maybe it was his teeth that were affecting his skin…so we will see if taking dairy out again will be the trick we need and if it comes back when he starts cutting more teeth.  He now has 6 teeth his four top middle and his 2 bottom.

William is still taking between 2 and 3 naps a day. Which are pretty flexible depending on how the day is working out. He takes the longest naps when he is in our bed and typically sleeps 2-3.5 hours. He has gotten into the habit of taking his 3rd nap when we put the kids to sleep, and then wakes up when the big kids are asleep and comes to get some alone play and Daddy and Mommy time. This happens a few nights a week and then a few nights a week he goes to sleep and stays asleep, needing to be snuggled after his initial 45 minutes-1 hour nap alone.  If he doesn’t do that mini nap he happily hangs out with Mike and I until he if ready to go to sleep, about 9 or sometimes, gasp, even later.  It is a lot of fun for us to have our littlest guy to play with.  He doesn’t mind the extra mom and dad only attention!  After he goes to sleep he then wakes for the day between 7 and 8 a.m.   He still wakes at night to nurse and sometimes there is a “bad night” with a lot of wake ups, but for the most part he grunts “awake” nurses and is asleep after his belly is full. 

William had his 9 month doctor appointment a few weeks early, so that he and Thomas could both be booked at the same time!   We saw the doctor on the 7th and William was 27 inches long (25%) and was 17.1 lbs (20%).