At his 9-month pediatrician’s visit this morning, Tatum weighed 21 lbs, 9 oz (70-75th percentile) and measured almost 30 inches (85th percentile). Dr. O described him as “long and lean”—our baby, lean?! Bruce and I must have exchanged a surprised expression, because our doctor chuckled and said that even a lean baby looks chunky at 9 months. He said Tatum is in PERFECT health and clearly gets plenty to eat. Which, I must say, he does.
EATING
Tatum nurses at least three times a day (more on the weekends when I’m not working) and takes a bottle of mixed breastmilk and formula from Sarah twice during the day M-F. But oh, does he ever LOVE food! He eats almost anything we put in front of him. Current favorites are pears, squash and yogurt. In fact, I think if you mixed anything with a bit of the YoBaby organic vanilla yogurt he’d slurp it right up. What he really really likes, though, is feeding himself. He eats cereal, small bits of green beans, yams or regular potato, cut-up peeled grapes, banana (though he doesn’t much care for the texture of it, so this can be a hard sell), and has even tried a bit of shredded chicken and recently snatched some sausage off of his dad’s pizza and chomped it right down! I’m glad he’s still getting breastmilk and plan to continue nursing him until he’s at least 12 months old, but I also don’t think weaning the Tater is going to be a problem AT ALL. The kiddo loves to eat and seems more than ready for table food.
SLEEPING
Our bedtime routine starts at 7 PM with Tatum in bed by 7:30 PM most nights. Tate sleeps soundly through the night and has for some time now. Every now and then we’ll hear him awake around 4 or 5 AM, but he tends to put himself back to sleep fairly easily and generally wakes up around 7 AM. This weekend was an exception, as he was up around 6 AM every morning (yawn!)…and some mornings he actually sleeps in until 8! But around 7 AM is the norm. Tatum still isn’t much of a napper, but he’ll usually go down for about 45 minutes in the morning and maybe another 45 minutes to an hour in the afternoon. It all adds up to about 13 hours of sleep a day, which our pediatrician seems to feel is fine.
PLAY
Everything is about movement with this kid. He wants to do nothing but crawl, pull up on things, stand up, kneel, and crawl some more. He doesn’t need much of a hand to balance these days, and several times we’ve seen him let go of whatever he’s been holding on to and balance for 4-5 seconds before landing (very elegantly, of course) on his bum. He seems to be very close to standing on his own!
He likes to hold something in one or both hands as he crawls, scooting along on it like a skateboard. His favorite toys are starting to look pretty rough around the edges thanks to being used as a skooter by Tatum! As are our remote controls...
He’s into EVERYTHING. If it looks like something he could use to pull himself up, he’s on it (including the dog’s food and water dish holder, as seen here).
Helping Daddy read the paper
He loves to pound and bang on things (kitchen utensils on the tile floor are fun!) and enjoys the water. He’s been going to swim classes with his dad and me for the past few weeks and he really likes them. This past lesson he was kicking and splashing and having a ball, and he loves bath time! In fact, we took this little video on the iPhone of him during one of his baths. This was the first time we’d introduced him to bath toys—the kind that you suck water into and then squirt it back out—and he laughed so hard he fell over in the bathtub!
TALK
He does lots of syllable talk with the “ma ma ma” and “da da da” and “ba ba ba” noises. In addition to the grunts and growls—probably still his favorite noise to make—he now throws his head back and yells out these long, drawn-out yodels of noise that sound something like “Ba ba yaya aaaaoooooooooooo!”
Tatum still has his serious moments, but he’s generally just a fun, easy kiddo. He laughs easily and makes us laugh all the time. We're so completely and totally in love with every grubby finger, each square little toe, those crazy-long eyelashes, and that fuzzy hair on his beautiful head—not to mention every single unnamed part that makes up his amazing little person.
A rather distracted and/or disgruntled set of 9-month monkey pics:
Oh wow...9 months already. Where did time go? Your little Tater looks like so much fun to be around. My favorite pic of this post is the one where he reads the paper and is all focused. Oh and then the "pick it up from the floor without actually getting down on his knees."
ReplyDeleteGotta admit....I am a tad bit jealous on Tate's sleeping progress, but happy for you ;-)