9 Month Update

Dear Ava,
We thought that six months old was where it was at, then seven months old was a blast, and now 9 months is definitely our favorite ago so far. You are so fun. And happy. And cute. And smart.

Baby Girl, at 9 months old you...

• Wear 6-9, 9, and some 12 month clothing.
• Weigh 19 pounds and 2 ounces.
• Are 28 inches long.
• Wear size 3 diapers.
• Say "Mama" and "Dada." Or more like "mamamamamama" and "dadadadadadada." All. Day. Long.
• Have gone from giving tentative, delayed waves to hysterical, two handed ones. You wave at everyone, even if they aren't looking at you, nor are particularly interested in saying "hi" back. But if they are looking at or you or giving you even the least bit of attention, it's on. You turn into a total spaz, bouncing up & down and practically catapulting yourself out of our arms to get to him or her.
• Love people. Especially fellow babies or kids. We took you to the Long Beach Aquarium and you got a much bigger kick out of all the school-aged kids who were there on a field trip than any of the colorful fish or other sea creatures.
• Have been to Denver, where it all started! Daddy and I met in Denver and your grandparents and many of our good friends still live in this awesome city. We had a great trip in February. There had been a big storm only days before we arrived so there was a lot of snow on the ground. It was so fun to introduce you to snow for the first time. Sadly, we don't have many photos because we left our (very expensive) camera on the plane on the flight there. Doh! These cell phone pics will have to do...

At REI

Ava & Grandma Russell

Abigail and Ava at Emily & Brian's Fun House

• Have 4 teeth! Your two front, bottom teeth are completely in and your two top teeth are peeking through. We thought we'd miss your gummy smile, but this one is pretty darn cute too.

If you look really close you can see the bottom two

• Are a great eater. Your favorite foods are homemade baked sweet potato fries, puréed sweet potatoes, avocados, rice of all kinds (brown rice, chicken fried rice, Spanish rice, white rice...) and Clif bars; in that order. Your least favorite food is banana. It just sits on your high chair tray untouched and you look around like, "what else you got?" Here you are eating your beloved sweet potatoes fries.

• Have a new favorite game. It's called "Clear the coffee table." You "crab crawl" around the perimeter of the coffee table, picking up each item on it; books, magazines, remote controls, etc. and throwing them on the ground one by one. When it's all cleared you bang on the table for us to put the items back on it so you can do it all over again. It's a really fun game. For you.

 

• Can stand on your own for a couple of seconds!
• Can sleep through the night... you just don't want to. I went away for a weekend and my goal was to have you sleeping through the night so that daddy and Grandma & Grandpa Power would get to sleep as well. After a very short bout of letting you "cry it out" when you woke up instead of feeding you every time you woke up, you started sleeping through the night. You just needed that little push. We were both much happier in the mornings, all well-rested. Then everything went to heck while I was gone. Daddy has some night shifts coming up we'll start all over again soon here.
• Are obsessed with clapping. You don't do it yourself yet, but you love when other people do it. You know we clap when you do something impressive so whenever you hear clapping, whether it's at church or when daddy is watching a golf tournament on TV, you perk up and look around like, "What'd I do?"
• Are (pretty much) clear of eczema! Hallelujah! This is a HUGE answer to prayer. We were at our wit's end with this horrible stuff but we feel like we've finally experienced a break through. The allergy tests came back to be not all that helpful. On a scale of 1-6, 6 being the most severe. Your results were: 

Fish 0

Wheat 0

Beastmilk 0

Soy 0

Walnut 0

Milk 1

Egg white 2

Peanut 2

 No 3-6's which are the ones that would actually cause a reaction enough to pay attention to. I was shocked that you weren't allergic to wheat. You or I consuming wheat and your skin freaking out really seemed to correlate. I'm going with my "mommy intuition" on this one and continuing to use very sparingly in both of our diets. We're continuing to try to figure it all out but in the meantime we went to a dermatologist as well and have a good skin routine going that is working really well so far. Yay! God knows we needed to make some headway on this. It's so sad to see you ichy and swollen and in pain. I've never prayed and begged for direction and answers from God so much as I have in the last three months. God's always been there for us and He came through again. Here are the before and after pics:

At the Dr. Pobresita : (

Beauty face!

We love you so, so much Baby Girl. We can't believe how quickly you're growing up and that we're already starting to plan your first birthday party! When did this happen?! Here's to many more months and years of enjoying YOU!

Love You, 

Mamamamamama & Dadadadadadada