Nine Months of Tommy

Tommy turned nine months old this past week. At his nine-month checkup on Monday, he weighed 18 pounds 11 ounces and measured 28 inches long, putting him at the 31st percentile for weight and the 32nd percentile for length. His head measured 17 3/4 inches circumference.

A few of the key highlights from the last month:

• Says “dada” and “mama” all the time now. Tommy also makes b, n, and w sounds fairly consistently.
• Makes clicking sounds all the time. When I wrote Tommy’s eight-month update, he had just learned how to make clicking sounds. Now he clicks every single day and loves when people click back and forth with him.
• Makes roaring noises and talks animatedly with us and with his Wubbanubs, stuffed animals, Noah’s Ark animals, etc.
• Just in the past week, Tommy has started clapping and will almost always clap along with you when you clap first.
• Initiates peek a boo, usually with a blanket or at the edge of his pack ‘n play. Typically, he stays hidden for approximately 0.05 seconds, but sometimes he waits a little bit longer.
• Plays catch on the floor, passing a ball back and forth. Of course, his aim isn’t great, but he definitely understands the concept of the game.
• Still loves waving and is starting to wave hi and bye.
• Attempts to pull himself up regularly and can stand unassisted on a steady surface for a few seconds at a time. He still has zero interest in crawling and prefers to lay on his back and scoot around the floor or roll around to get where he wants to go. Nine times out of ten, his scooting and rolling is deliberate.
• Is getting much more assertive when he does or doesn’t want something – pushing his bottle away, insisting that he take a toy with him, etc.
• Puts the Wubbanub pacifier back in his mouth. He doesn’t do this consistently at night yet (which you know, I’m not a little bit anxious for or anything), but he does it regularly during the day.
• Is comfortable in the bathtub now and loves it. He enjoys splashing the water and playing with the rubber ducks and rubber squirt toys.
• Still loves phone camera selfie time (most of which I don’t record) and waves to himself like crazy. He’ll wave when you show him pictures, too, both of himself and other people.
• Still loves toys that make noise or anything that can be used to make noise.
• Loves any sort of physical manipulation game, such as Hickory Dickory Dock, playing airplane or rocket, and being turned upside down, sideways, etc.

We had a fun, low-key first Easter with Tommy. He got Easter baskets from us, his birth family, and one set of grandparents as well as a card in the mail from his birth great-grandparents. The holiday weekend included church on Friday and Sunday and some time with Jake’s family on Sunday afternoon and evening.

Tommy remains easily able to entertain himself with toys and books, sometimes sitting independently for 20 minutes at a time. He’s so strong now that he needs constant supervision in his bouncy seats and can only use them on carpeted surfaces. Otherwise, he’s likely to tip them over. He continues to love his Baby Einstein jumper and Exer-Saucer. His newest favorite toy is the Little People Noah’s Ark, which we purchased this past month with some gift card money.

Eating regular food has been going great the past month. While Tommy still prefers to eat formula lying down in someone’s lap, he does really well sitting in his high chair for long stretches and is almost always interested in trying food when we’re eating. He opens his mouth when offered food and will take at least a few tastes of a food. Regular food continues to have strong tastes, but he doesn’t outright gag nearly as much as he did a month ago. We’ve given him crackers and pretzels to suck on a few times, and he’ll happily gum away at them. His formula eating remains steady at four 7-ounce bottles per day, spaced 3-4 hours apart.

Aside from some sleep difficulties with the helmet, especially at night, Tommy’s sleep remains largely unchanged. We’ve had a handful of rough nights where Tommy wakes up 5-6 times. Otherwise he sleeps his usual 8-9 hour stretch at night, waking 1-2 times at most. Then he takes two 1-hour naps (sometimes one nap over an hour) most days, one in the late morning or early afternoon and one in the late afternoon or early evening.

Tommy is wearing size 3 diapers and a mix of 6-month and 9-month clothing. Some 3-6 month clothing still fits great while some 6-month clothing is already too small, so he’s got a range of sizes in the mix now. As the weather warms up, I’ll transition him out of most of the 3-6 month and 6-month cold weather clothes and into more 6-9 and 9-12 month spring clothing.

I try not to talk about things Tommy’s not doing yet in my update posts because there is always a list a mile long of “soon Tommy will be [fill in the blank].” But a lot of people ask about whether or not he’s getting teeth. So far, Tommy has zero teeth. Despite popular opinion, it’s completely normal for babies to cut their first teeth anywhere between three and 12 months, so Tommy is in no ways behind on this milestone.

This past month, Tommy and I went to the Chicago Botanic Garden for the annual orchid show. He wasn’t super smiley in any of my pictures, but I promise that he had fun.

This past month, we also went to the Racine Art Museum. Among other exhibits, they had a three-week long PEEPS Art Exhibition for Easter.

Finally, in early April, Tommy has his one-month helmet check, which went well. All of his numbers have improved, and the orthotist is happy with his growth progress. At his initial appointment, he was about four standard deviations from the norm. Now he’s between two and three deviations. It’s very likely that he’ll be one deviation or right around the norm by the time he’s a year old.

To see all of my past Tommy updates, head to the Family section of the blog.