"I'm not a little monster. This is a little monster!"Tuesday marked Emelia's nine-month "birthday," meaning that she's now spent more time outside the womb than in it. It's easy to forget there was a time when she wasn't a part of our lives, much less such an integral part of them.
Yesterday at her checkup, she received a round of immunizations that she seems to have handled without incident. As for her weight and height, she's 20 pounds 10 oz, and 28 inches long. Apparently that puts her between the 75th and 90th percentile for weight and between the 50th and 75th for height, compared with the 50th percentile for both at the last checkup, so she's grown by leaps and bounds over the past three months.
She's got four teeth, two up and two down. She's still curious about everything, and generally happy. She laughs a bunch, and "talks" a fair amount -- Kathy and Avery (the nanny) say they think she's properly used Dada and Nana (how Avery is referred to), but I'm not sure. The only thing preventing her from walking on her own is balance, and she really wants to get that down. She often prefers that we take her two hands for balance while she walks rather than crawl, and moves quickly regardless of whether she walks or crawls. All it takes is a few seconds, and she's gone over to the stairs in order to climb them (we never did get gates, and now she goes up them with no trouble (with one of us behind her all the way, of course)). She's not much into being read to -- when she's up she wants to do stuff rather than sit there. So when we do read to her, it's often background noise for her while she does something else. Still, she's started opening the books she's chewing on and at least appears to be looking at the pictures.
I also think the childcare situation is working well. Kathy loves having those two days a week with Emelia. And as for the other three days, Emelia loves Avery, and we're happy with her as well. Also, by having Jonah (the other child in the nannyshare) in her life, Emelia is probably getting at least a bit of the experience of having a sibling.
"No More Photos, Please"
