9 months.

Yay! 9 months!

Weight: 18lbs 5oz (50th percentile)

Height: 27  1/4 inches (40th percentile)

Head: 44  1/2 cm (50th percentile)

I am two weeks behind on Claire's nine month blog but I wanted to wait until she had her nine month appointment (last week) and I wanted to wait until today when she turned 40 weeks and 3 days. The significance of that? I was pregnant with Claire 40 weeks and 3 days. Today, she has been outside of my womb as long as she spent in my womb. Tomorrow, she will be one step closer to no longer needing my body to sustain her life. Each day she becomes more independent. I love watching her grow, and find her way in this world, but I have to admit it also makes me a bit sad.

This month's post is loaded with pics. I'm sure as you are browsing you will notice this child does not lack personality :)

This child LOVES to eat. And she loves to do it all on her own! Within the last month she has stopped letting me feed her pureed foods, or any foods for that matter. For awhile I switched to the organic pouches, but then about a week ago she stopped letting me feed her those as well. In the last two days she has wanted to do the pouches all on her own. What she loves best is chunks of food. She will eat pretty much anything. Breads, plain pastas, rice,  organic puffs, mum mums, LOVES cooked carrots, LOVES avocado, banana, pear, green beans, peas,cucumber, broccoli, banana, peach, watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, plain chicken. She does really great with tiny chunks. She is able to get them with a pincher grasp (amazing pincher grasp, the girl can spot a hair on the floor and pick it up). She also does great mashing the food with her gums and rarely if ever gags.  The last couple days she has started spitting out her water the minute she takes a drink and blowing raspberries. She finds it absolutely hilarious to spit water everywhere. You could see the two top teeth through the gums last week and they just popped out, at the same time, within the last couple days.

Out of the four lovey blankies in her bed she has finally attached to one this last month. And she loves it. She has chosen the hot pink one that my mom made for Ella when she was a baby. Ella had attached to another blankie and never cared for this one. Just like Ella did, Claire finds the corners and sucks them. The second you lay her in her crib she grabs the blankie, starts sucking, and immediately looks calm. All she needs at night is to find it to go back to sleep. She goes to bed around 7 and sleeps til 7 waking one time, sometimes two times a night to eat. She is napping around 930 am for around an hour and then sleeping again around 1 or 130 for one to two hours.

I am pretty sure I have said it every month, but I will say it again. Claire is the happiest child I have ever met. People in public constantly comment on what a happy baby she is. She is so animated and has a million faces that she makes. Her most recent favorite thing is screaming as loud as she can with eyes closed, mouth open, fist clenched just for fun. This girl has some lungs on her. She also gets Ella's attention by yelling. One game they like to play is Claire will yell at some tone, length, pitch and Ella will repeat it. They do it over and over and Claire changes the sound of it each time. While it kills my ears, I love it. It makes me smile. Claire constantly says her name. She has now added "Claire Hi". She loves the song "clap clap clap hello, clap hello to claire". She requests it by saying cla and putting her hands on top of each other and moving her arms up and down. She still loves to play peek a boo. She loves sitting on my lap. Like this child is so content just sitting on my lap hanging out. She is attempting to  imitate lots of words. She can currently say mama, dada, claire, ella, clap, up, go, hi, yay, and lots of other approximations and attempts. She can wave hi and bye.

Just like with Ella, I am pretty sure we are going to have a roller, not a crawler. She has rolled for several months now, but within the last couple weeks is now rolling with purpose. She rolls everywhere. She sees what she wants and rolls to it. She also scoots/bounces places on her butt. Anymore she does not want to spend time sitting but rather will go from sitting down to belly and then rolls. Also if I am on the floor and she is sitting near me she will butt scoot to my lap and try to pull herself up into my lap. She really is my little cuddle bug.

As seen below..taking pics outside of her is impossible. She wants nothing else but to pick and eat grass and flowers.