evynn claire | nine months

How many months old? 9 months

Weight? 20 lbs 4oz (75%)

 Length? 28.5inches (90%)

Head? 17.5inches

Dr apt? All looks great! 

Any teeth? still… nope! She’s a late bloomer when it comes to teeth I guess!

Sleep? Taking 2 naps throughout the day; 1 around 9:30am (usually 1.5-2 hours) and another at 1 or 2pm (again, 1.5-2 hours). She goes to bed for the night at around 7:30 and sleeps till 7:00 am, PTL. Some days when we’re out and about (Church on Wednesday nights, etc.) her bedtime gets bumped back and it’s a bit chaotic for alittle while. We trained her on sleeping for months, who can blame the girl when her new schedule is thrown off?! Now that we have her sleeping so well in her crib, she refuses to sleep anywhere else besides her crib (and a MOVING carseat). So, when we were at a wedding a few weeks ago and it was 10:30 pm and she was passed exhausted, she still fought it and would not give it up for a long time! Ha! And to think she used to only sleep in our arms!

Feeding? She’s eating great! I occassionally puree fruits and veggies for her babysitter and then give her finger foods most of the time, and pouches of “ella’s kitchen” when we’re out and about. So far her favorite foods are black bean “burgers”, broccoli, strawberries, mangoes, French toast sticks. She still nurses 4+ times a day.

Developmental milestones?

• ·      Wearing size 3 diapers still, size 6-12 or 9-12 clothes and still 3-6 and sometime 6-9 mo shoes. The smallest feet!
• ·      She says “bye bye” and waves at random times and when we prompt her. Still pretty frequent “dada” but not always associated but still not saying “mama”… yet. she also shakes her head if she hears  the word "no", 
• ·      She crawls everywhere, and fast! She still has one leg kicked up and the other dragging but she gets where she needs to go ;)
• ·      She’s pulling up on everything and can stand solo for a few seconds. If you’re holding her hands she’ll move her feet and walk. So soon!!
• ·      She’s more interactive, she has big stories to tell… of course we have no idea what her babble means haha! She’ll use her hands to talk more. I notice her pointing at things or waving at things more often.
• ·      She’ll hand me something she finds and when I notice it “WOW!!! WHAT DID YOU FIND?!” she laughs hysterically.
• ·      Anytime we raise her in the air, tickle her belly, play hide and seek, or pretty much anything daddy does is HILARIOUS, huge screeching belly laughs. They’re the best
• ·      She has a good pincer grasp! She’ll pick up little black beans and whole fist sweet potato slices, etc.
• ·      She loves to play independently as long as we’re in her eyesight. If we leave the room with her noticing, all heck breaks lose. Otherwise, she plays happily with anything around her and talks to herself.
• if we play hide and seek, or just hide behind something, she tilts her head so she can find us, it's so cute
• ·      She is a D I V A if we take something away from her, full blown-throw her body to the ground, pouty lips, temper tantrum
• when she's nursing, she pops off and sits up and has a HUGE grin on her face and looks around for everyone to see her
• ·      She loves looking outside. Oftentimes while in her highchair, she gazes off outside and forgets what we’re doing ;)

Daily routine:

On a perfect day

7am: she wakes up, I bring her to my bed to nurse/play in bed

8-9: she plays in the walker in the kitchen while I make breakfast and coffee, we sit down together at the table and eat breakfast

9-10: play on the floor in the living room, diaper change, nap time clothes on, nurse, lay down for nap

10-12: nap time in crib

12: lunch time with mom then nurse

12:30-2: play (exersaucer in the window, living room, run errands, etc.)

2-4?:nurse then nap (or as much as we can get!)

4-6: play, dad comes home, go for a family walk, mom starts dinner

6pm: family dinner at the table (ev is in her diaper only), then straight to the bathtub, then lotions/pj’s and sleepsack

7-7:30: nurse/lay down for bed

**my current goal is to wean her from nursing at bedtimes but rather setting her in her crib at her normal nap/bedtime and let her put herself down. So far so good!

Favorite toy?  when she’s in a good mood, she’ll run around in her walker for awhile. She’s good as long as we’re in her sight. She’ll just run up and down our kitchen while we cook. She loves standing at the outside edge our bathtub while I’m in the bathroom and turning on and off the water, ha!

Speech and language?  Mostly “byebye”,  Still “dadada” and a few “momom” on her own timing. And just lots of chatter over all.

Loves?  Exploring! She finds anything and everything and wants to check it out and taste it. She always wants to crawl/stand and cannot understand why she can’t do that sometimes (when we’re out to eat, etc.), playing with her food in her highchair, when she has a sink bath in the kitchen she loves to lean over to the other side and investiage the drain haha! We have to hold her down!, taking all the diapers out of the package and throwing them all over the room

Dislikes? When you take something away from her or turn her away from something, when she’s tired and we still have to eat/take a bath/etc., being laid down to have her diaper changed

Firsts: hotel trip! The first night she was wayyy too excited about this sleepover but she was wiped but the second day and crashed. On demand word “bye-bye”, play date

We love: she is really the sweetest and happiest baby. Of course we have our moments when I can’t seem to console her but I think we’ve learned who she is pretty well and overall, she’s all smiles and giggles!

as of lately

a few weekend's ago we had DNOW-our church's weekend long youth event full of fun, great speakers, worship, and fellowship. It's a busy busy weekend for my husband and I was behind the camera 99% of the time to capture pictures and video of it all. Cody was a big kid and had a blast. Evynn was quite the hit too ;)

^Cody's little sister came to help as a leader for the weekend. Here is some sister/brotherly love ;)

The weather is finally occasionally nice. Lucky for us, when it is nice, there's a snow cone stand walking distance from our house. So last week we loaded ev into her stroller and went over. Here is the best family picture I got-me looking like a hot mess, Cody blinded by the sun, and Ev trying to eat my snow cone ;)

on Friday the weather really was nice so we got Ev dressed in a new summer outfit and broke out her summer candles (they're size 6-9 and still too big.....)

That day we went to our friends annual crawfish boil and it is always so fun! and we eat way too much!

So far, I'm loving this spring and transition into summer. It seems like we're constantly planning summer vacations, parties, and fun things all while our baby girl is growing bigger and bigger!

baby led weaning

I knew I wanted to do BLW (baby led weaning) once I heard about it, long before we were even pregnant. cody and I love eating healthy food, try to avoid much processed food, and want to try our hardest to not have a picky eater (since we are far from picky and we've seen way too many picky eaters)

what is baby led weaning? introducing foods in their actual form to 

infants so they can learn what food feels like and looks like, they're 

able to learn to grab and pick up and transfer to their mouth 

independently. the weaning part is because they wean off nursing by

 eating how much they want.

I was SO excited to get started on Evynn's half birthday, i took things slow-introducing 1 food at a time for a few days, then introducing one more... we did straight up food (a half of a banana, a slice of avocado) so she could hold the whole thing and nibble off bites, and then also made mashes and purees for her babysitter with the same foods (to make it less messy). because if we're honest, when Ev holds it and is in charge, much of it ends up on the floor 

Now its been 2 months and some days BLW meal planning is easy, avocados for us with tacos, avocado slice for you! other days I'm scrambling to decide what she can eat.. some things aren't soft enough, some things you're supposed to be cautious with, some things I just straight up don't think my baby is ready for! However, I know my 8 month old will be a 1 year old, like, tomorrow and so I need to toughen up and introduce more textures and flavors. 

another issue, Ev still has NO teeth! it hasn't bothered her too much, she gums or sucks on anything to get it soft enough, but it still scares me when giving food. I'm weary to introduce meats (until her Dr says so) for this reason. 

french toast sticks

broccoli

sweet potato rounds and banana bites

we haven't done strict btw like I mentioned above, we do purees/mashes for her babysitter, and food pouches when going out to eat (until we get better at eating, then we'll just feed her off our plate). 

pros of BLW:

it's cheaper! as inexpensive as a 79 cent jar of babyhood costs at the store, I have to say that a single sweet potato or a whole bunch of bananas stills beats the cost

its healthier obviously! we just give her the organic produce that we already have at our house.we know what she is eating is a pure and it can be. have you looked at the ingredients in a jar of babyhood.... 'nuff said. 

it's teaching her textures/motor skills as mentioned above, allowing her to grab, pick up, and put in her mouth her own food is teaching her what avocados feel like vs. broccoli and so on. she's able to know to open her hands wide to pick up a whole banana vs using her pincer grasp for little pea. 

what we've tried: liked vs. disliked

sweet potatoes

avocado

banana

carrots

zucchini

yellow squash

egg yolk

brocoli

peas

pears

blueberries

mangos

yogurt

green beans

french toast
black beans
strawberries
raspberries

mommy and me meal ideas:
so now that i'm trying to get creative on what to feed her, it just makes sense that i match our meals together to make cooking a lot easier... so here's some ideas:

baby: ezekiel bread sticks sans crust made french toast with just egg yolk in butter, homemade organic apple sauce from the day before 

mom: french toast with the egg whites, bacon

baby: egg yolk scrambled eggs with a bit of breastmilk, pear slices sans skin

mom: scrambled egg whites, bacon, other half of pear 

(we just happen to have bacon on hand, I really don't eat it everyday)

egg is an allergen, so we've been very cautious giving eggs and monitoring for signs of reaction-none so far!

baby: roasted sweet potatoes slices with the skin removed, bites of black bean burgers, avocado slices

us: black bean burgers (black beans, garlic, eggs, bread crumbs) on ezekiel buns, with avocado slices and siracha mayo with sweet potato slices on the side

baby: leftover black bean patty, mango slices, yogurt

mom: black bean patty topped with fried egg and salsa, mango

baby: french toast slices without crust, organic plain yogurt, strawberry and banana slices

mom: french toast, yogurt, strawberries and bananas

weekend in iPhone pictures

this weekend we were embarking on our first hotel trip with Evynn during a trip to Big Spring for Cody's best friends wedding!

We woke up Friday and had a normal Friday morning... except it was SNOWING. HUGE snowflakes, it was crazy. We got ready, packed clothes for cold weather and headed to lubbock to run a few last minute errands then to hit the road!

Ev luckily usually takes a good nap in the car

We got to our hotel in Big Spring, got dressed for rehearsal and went to the rehearsal/dinner then back to the hotel where Evynn thought this sleepover was a great idea and was literally bouncing around until 10:45. 10:45. not okay. 

Saturday morning we woke up and hit up the free breakfast at the hotel, Cody had some work to do first to we enjoyed some playing around in the hotel room

around 10 I dropped Cody off with the rest of the guys for wedding day festivities and i hit the road with Ev to midland. I knew it would be all day long before I needed to be anywhere so I figured I would go to midland and spend some time with my brother/sister in law and see my friend Bailley. Cody and Stephanie had JUST finished running a half marathon so they were beat, but we grabbed lunch with them then I went and saw bailley and caught up on much needed girl talk ;)

late nights mean starbucks morning runs ;)

ev CRASHED once we left midland and stayed asleep in her carseat for awhile once I got her inside, this is rare, y'all!

After this weekend I think the definition of insanity is: taking a 8 month old to a wedding where the dad is occupied all weekend and you're managing wrangling a mobile baby on your own while trying to have fun

for. real.

we survived the weekend but there were definitely moments that I was completely overwhelmed and in over my head. I definitely would've enjoyed  a babysitter but that wasn't possible with an out of town wedding. Cody was so sweet and at the reception took Ev to mingle with him several times so I could eat and chat in peace ;)

Cody did a great job as best man and officiant for part of the ceremony. 

note: she was wearing white tights but what's an already overwhelming day without a blow out?!

loved getting to catch up with kylie! thankful for friends in the same life stage and circumstances as us. 

now that we have ev sleeping like a champ in her crib, she refuses to sleep anywhere but her crib. This makes being out and about tricky. I knew she would be sleepy around 7 and she's started rubbing her eyes but fought it till 9:3ish! I gave her food, and two bottles (one of which spilled all over us, chaos y'all) so I had nothing else to offer, ha! Finally Cody wrapped her in his jacket and in the middle of the dance floor, she finally closed her eyes! This girl! I took over and let her sleep on me the rest of the reception. I've never seen the girl so exhausted!

LOL at this picture, but it was the best we could get. how perfect is this marquee LOVE though!?

We crashed hard at 11pm after the wedding (which is like 4am to us!!) then woke up at 5:45 to head back and get ready for church. It's been a day of naps and fixer upper episodes and aunt Lolo joined us for dinner!

Congrats Hadden and Sarah! such a beautiful wedding!