This is an odd little milestone to note, but there is something thrilling when you realize your child has now been in this big, wide world longer than they were in your belly!

Coraline started playing peekaboo this month with blankets. She doesn’t really wait for you to shout peekaboo out at her before she already has the blanket up in her fact again, but it’s so fun to watch her. She also loves laughing when everyone else laughs, particularly with Jameson.

She really just seems like the happiest baby to me. She only gets upset when she is ill, tired, or very hungry. Or sometimes when people leave the room; she has definitely noticed that this month!

Coraline has some adorable little quirks, like twirling her little feet around in circles at the ankle when she is sitting. And she does love to sit; she is later than Jameson to be on hands and knees since she is just so content to sit and play with her toys. Jameson was on the move earlier!

But this month she has started adding some movement to the reaching she does when she bends all the way forward almost parallel to the ground. She now scoots herself on her butt slowly, and when she is on her belly, she does scoot herself backwards with her arms. She very rarely still gets on her knees; instead, she puts one foot behind her while the other stays in sitting position, but she is starting to move in her own way!

We did find her in her crib twice last weekend sitting up! So she managed to get herself from belly to sitting up position.

This month she actually seems less inclined to do any standing rather than more; I think that’s because she spends the majority of her time sitting or on her belly. We will need to start propping her up against some furniture on her feet some more for practice.

As I mentioned, she is noticing when people leave the room. To go along with that, we have experienced a little shyness with her the past couple weeks. When she has met someone she doesn’t see as often, like Grandpa, even though they live close, she tucks her head into my neck. It’s also pretty adorable. It’s hard to get her to smile for those new-to-her people as well!

Another big milestone for us this month was the finale of nursing. We had slowly been decreasing our nursing time since she stopped wanting to nurse (or even take a bottle) at night before bed and were just down to the morning time when, one day, she refused. It’s hard to believe this baby, who only wanted to nurse and gave us such trouble early on has finally stopped nursing. I am relishing the freedom, and just like with Jameson, I am happy that she chose herself so that there was no particular day that I had to decide to quit instead.

We have been doing more baby and solid foods, and she loves to eat! With Jameson, we struggled with baby food since he only wanted to feed himself real food; with Coraline, we have not had any issues at all. We also bought a new high chair that is much easier to clean! It’s all plastic and so easy to wipe down. Coraline has discovered how to drop food from the leg holes though and likes to do that when she’s finished eating.

Our final big event this month was health related! On Friday the 13th, exactly 9 months old, Coraline finally got tubes put in her ears. We actually had another rupture to the other ear just last week a couple days prior to her procedure, which was our 4th or 5th time (I may have lost track!) We continued to have ear drums rupture one after another every 10-15 days, though the last one we had a gap of 20-25 days between. The continued ruptures were due to pressure build up, either of just fluid or from infection, and put her hearing at risk.

Coraline did really well. We arrived at 6:30 in the morning and she was done by 9ish and on our way home. She was a little crazy crying when she woke up in recovery but after just about inhaling 7 ounces of formula, she was sucking her thumb and ready to sleep for much of the day. Now, we only have to give her drops in her ears for her infections which is great.

We did have a terrible experience when in came to actually scheduling the surgery, where they didn’t call us with our time the day before as expected, and due to a series of misinformation given by our scheduler, we didn’t call to inquire until they were closed for the day! So after calling 3 different numbers and speaking to 3 or 4 people, an on call doctor finally called our doctor, who wasn’t “sure” but “thought” she was the first appointment. Thankfully, she was. Or we wouldn’t have been happy to wait with a hungry baby!

We have a follow up appointment in a month to test hearing and check on the tubes, but so far, so good!

I love her baby-ness with the little dimples on her finger joints and elbows and the couple rolls on her thighs. I love her darker hair and the eyes that seem to be remaining blue. We love that little two-teeth smile that we’ve enjoyed for longer than we thought we would (though we think she might be starting to teethe again!).

She’s 16 lb, 15 oz of pure joy!