Living with Intention: Audrey Joy, nine months old

Audrey Joy turned nine months old on August 18th. This month was huge for change.

She's crawling, standing, walking along furniture, and interacting with us more and more. I don't think she's too interested in actually walking, but she does love to "walk" with us holding both hands. Don't try to let go of one. She just decides to crawl if you do.

Not so sure how to feel about being laid down on this tablecloth (yes, for real) with a huge silver thing flashing in her face.

She's found her voice! She babbles, squawks, says "bahbahbah, mamama, puhpuhpuh, and continues to pop her lips together. She enjoys whatever her sister is doing, and follows her around unless Josie goes just a little too fast. A lot of times, she plays in her room in the morning while I run around getting things ready for the day. She'll make her way down the hallway and can get about halfway before she needs some assistance. She's so cute sitting in that long empty hallway, always with a huge smile like "look at how far I got this time!" With so much more room to move around in our new house, she's always extra tired by nap or bedtime. I love it.

Audrey is a great eater. She loves everything. I cannot think of a single thing that she won't eat. She eats so much real food that her milk intake is less than half. Now it's more for thirst quenching than anything else. She still has a bottle in the early morning (5-6 AM) and one at night, but other than that she just takes sips here and there. It doesn't matter what I try to do to get her to drink more during the day, she doesn't seem to care and is clearly growing plenty.

Her statistics were interesting this month. She jumped from 38% to about 59% for weight. She weighs 18.8 lbs (she gained 3.3 lbs) and her height is 28 inches (she grew 2 inches in three months). She's quickly outgrowing her babyness. My heart hurts a little when I see her act so old and move so quickly, but then it's exciting and I get over it pretty quickly.

Sleep hasn't changed. She still naps great and wakes up in the early morning for a bottle. I don't mind, so we haven't tried to break this habit. We put her to bed at 7:00 and she gets up around 6:30-7:00 AM. She can sleep through Josie's crazy theatrics at night so we haven't had too many problems. There was a while where we continued trying to put them to bed at the same time, and of course that was craziness. They egged each other on and prolonged falling asleep for hours. Once we had their bedtimes be at different times, bedtime in general went much more smoothly.

When she's tired, she moves. I said it last month, and I'll say it again, you wouldn't necessarily guess she's tired by this but it is the surest sign that she's ready for bed. She just.can't.keep.still. She has been a little more clingy towards me when she's tired, but generally she's happy to be held or played with by anybody.

She watches what others do closely before reacting. There has been an occasional wave here and there and she loves to have me clap her hands together. We do "so big!" and any time we are singing, she's in heaven.

We are definitely out of the 3-6 month range of clothes. With that growth spurt, she's a solid 6-9 month and we haven't really tried anything bigger since the seasons haven't changed. I'm curious to see if she'll jump up in size again since she's gearing up to walk or if that will make her more lean like it did with Josie.

This girl just makes my heart so happy. Those baby blues and toothy smiles are so sweet and kind of heart stopping. We are so thankful to have her with us, and life is better now than ever before.