Isabelle is 9 months old!

 

9 months old on Valentine's Day! ♥♥

Weight: 17 lbs. 6 oz. (22nd percentile)

Height: 27 5/8 inches (40th percentile)

Likes: SQUIRMING, Gerber Crunchies, dancing, smashing her high chair tray, arching her back, rocking on all fours, scooching backwards across the floor like an inchworm, humming, growling, shrieking, grabbing at dust particles in the air, trying to eat paper and baby wipes, taking baths and splashing, peek-a-boo, getting her two teeth brushed, wiping her dirty hands in her hair

Dislikes: sitting in high chair, the car seat or anything that straps her in, wind in her face, getting her nails clipped or nose wiped

New skills: scooting and crawling, pulling up to a stand, blowing raspberries, giving slobbery kisses, saying "rah rah rah" and "ma ma ma", drinking from a sippy cup, standing on her own for a few seconds, mermaid kicks

 

Isabelle is a major mama's girl and makes it known! It is nice to feel loved, but it is also very exhausting. She hasn't figured out yet that if I leave a room, I will be coming back...

 Give her a basket of laundry and she goes nuts pulling it all out.

*cheeks*

She is the Cheerio Queen! She has since developed a taste for more flavorful snacks, but she has eaten thousands of Cheerios.

Here she is packing away a few more. This month, she has started arching her back while in the high chair. (In fact she's doing it right now as I type.) I don't know if she's bored or uncomfortable but it makes it hard to feed her because she's too focused on doing it. And then you can watch as she smashes her tray and sends her food flying everywhere.

We've had such mild weather that we can hang out in the back yard even though it's February. It's been in the 60s in the sunshine, folks. THE SIXTIES.

I had to scan this pic of 11 month old Madelyn in because it's the same little black jacket. (I saved all her clothes--knew it would pay off someday.)

First swing of the year with Madelyn, and by the way how weird is that to see how 10 years has passed just like that!!

Various naked baby chub pictures...

Watching my Saturday morning cooking shows

First bath with Luke. She kept splashing him in the face.

 

 Those two are buddies.

 

 

Since she stays up so late, sometimes the only way I can get her to sleep is to give her to Mark while he's on the XBox. It usually does the trick.

 Oh my goodness look at that face!!

No, she still does not sleep in her crib...stinker.

Being fabulous

With her cousin Lily Yoder at her baby blessing,  2/1/15. They are 6 months apart.

 The big news this month is that she finally got mobile! Mark had been encouraging her to start crawling a couple months ago, but I was not ready yet, and apparently neither was she.

She did spend the last 6 weeks or so getting stranded on her belly all the time. Sometimes, she'd manage to get on all fours but then she wasn't sure what to do next.

 

 Eventually, she figured out how to do a backwards scooch on her belly by pushing herself with her arms. I was doing dishes and she was there next to me and when I turned around again, she was clear in the laundry room. That little inchworm.

February 11 was the day when her coordination finally started to kick in. She would do a "Stinkbug dance" with her bum in the air, and her first real crawl was still backwards. But literally overnight, she got the hang of it! By Valentine's Day, she was crawling like an old pro.

This is a compilation of several videos--it is a little longer at 3 minutes but it shows her progression from belly scoocher to crawler in one week. She is very pleased with herself! :)