libby's 9-month check-up

Today we had Libby's 9-month visit with Dr. Z. Only 1 shot today! She weighs 16 pounds (25th–50th percentile) and is 27 inches (50th percentile)—a little string bean. She's a little on the light side, but the doctor isn't concerned at all since she gained almost 2 pounds since her last check-up. Plus, she's been super active since she started crawling 2 months ago, which is probably keeping her lean. She started cruising—moving along and between furniture while holding on and walking—a few weeks ago, and she's standing up and sitting down like a pro now. Friday night I even turned around and caught her standing without holding onto anything. I'm guessing she might be an early walker.

She's finally eating baby food from a spoon after 2.5 months of trying without much success. Her appetite seemed to just take off about the time she started standing and cruising. She now eats oatmeal and fruit for lunch, oatmeal and a veggie for dinner, plus some other finger foods (and nursing is still going very well). She really likes feeding herself, and she's head over heels for Puffs, these little flavored puffed cereal treats that pretty much dissolve in your mouth. She thinks it's funny to try to feed them to Gilmore, who gladly cleans up the mess when she's finished eating. She's consistently signing "more" now. We were afraid she thought it was just the sign for Puffs, but she signed it yesterday when Kevin was tossing her in the air, and she signed it last night when I was feeding her peas. It really is a very helpful communication tool because I have no idea how much she wants to eat otherwise. Oh, and her second bottom tooth finally popped through this weekend, a whole month after her first one.

Even though she's becoming more independent and strong-willed every day, she's still a ton of fun. She loves to clap, wave and bang things together to make noise. And she's really interested in Casey, Morgan, Gilmore and Tosh—"people" about her size. We were having some sleep issues for a few weeks, but we seem to have those straightened out. We were really coddling her, thinking that she was teething, having separation anxiety, reaching new milestones—all things that can cause sleep disturbances. But she got to the point where she wouldn't nap at all, and she was up half the night. Once we determined that she could get herself down after standing up in her crib and that she wasn't "stuck," we tried the Ferber sleep training method again and it was miraculous. It took one night and she was back to her two-hour naps, and she's even been sleeping through the night for a week now. It's like we hit a reset button!

That's pretty much it for little Libs. She's beautiful ("Those eyes," we hear all the time), healthy and happy. Enjoy a few recent photos as a reward for reading my long post!