9 Months

Baby girl was not so excited about our photo shoot this month. 

Maybe she was cold? Not sure, but she was a bit happier after I put the dress on her. 

Emery has taken over the house. She loves exploring the entire house and we are constantly double and triple checking for little toys on the floor. We've already missed a couple, finding her with a small ball that goes to a Lego reaction kit, a hatchimal, and hearing Belen yell, "She's got a Lego person head!!" It's a little stressful, but generally, the big kids have been really great about picking up the little things and it's just our stage of life right now to be checking her every couple of minutes to make sure we didn't miss something.

Belén has been super in to Emery this month, more so than any other month. She carries her around the entire house with her (another slightly stressful thing for mom--especially when she starts chasing after Shae because it makes Emery laugh). Emery seems to like it for the most part. As the third child, she doesn't get carried around all to often with everything else going on, so I'm sure she'd take the 5 year old belly grip over nothing. 

She looks like such a big girl sitting up in the tub and has now started moving herself all over the tub, chasing all the toys. It's so nice that she can get out of the sitting position now without it meaning flinging herself right back on to her head.

One of Belén's favorite places to carry her is over to the piano where they can make music together. 

Emery has figured out how to crawl on her knees, but still does the army crawl about 50% of the time, still a little faster for her as she tries to figure out how the knees work and how to not slip around on the wood floors. 

She tends to find herself in situations that she doesn't like as she tries to be wherever the other kids are. Under the table is so enticing as she watches for fallen food, but always ends with her in a fit because she runs into the chair legs or gets herself stuck. 

She has just barely started clapping. 

She handles being out in the cold much better than ever before, as long as she is well bundled. 

She tried spaghetti for the first time this month and loved it. Darin and I are both in agreement that her favorite food this month has been blackberries. Hands down. She gobbles them right up, every single time. If she has multiple things on her tray, the blackberries are always gone first.

She also thinks it is super fun to drink out of the big people cups, albeit messy.

She has started this high pitched super intense scream when she wakes up at night, it seriously sounds like she is being tortured. It's so crazy because she will go from super-scream to silence in a instance. We were so paranoid the first few times it happened that we felt the need to check and make sure she was still okay after she quieted and she was. Just crazy that she can go from 100 to 0 in a second. 

After starting to wake up multiple times again, we did a few days of cry it out/Darin putting her back to sleep. It was a rough week, but she is now back to just the one waking around 4ish where I will go in and feed her. She often times starts scream-crying around 9 or 10 once or twice while we are getting ready for bed, but it only lasts for a minute or two before she puts herself back to sleep.

She is a solid 2 nap baby now, going down (usually) around 10 and 2, and then to bed at 7 p.m. She usually wakes up around 6:30 and occasionally is kind and waits until a little after 7.