9 Months

Annika is 9 months old, which means she has been outside of me as long as she was in me, give or take a day or two.

She loves standing up! She has pulled herself to her feet a few times and has mastered pulling to herself up to knees. I found her baby Tom's (sparkly silver shoes) at a Goodwill in OR for $1!

we're ready for summer!

She turned 9 months on my bday! We celebrated my birthday (May 31) with a BBQ at my dad's house. 

9 month stats:

14 lb 14 oz (5th %tile)

27.25 inches long (50th)

17.75 inch head circumference (75th!)

summary: she is tall, skinny, and smart! She checked out great at the appt. No health concerns. She held so still while Dr. Bunch was listening to her heart. It was pretty cute.

Annika is sleeping great! (except for last night for some reason:) She goes to sleep between 8 and 9 and sleeps solid until 6 or 7. After I feed her, she sleeps in until sometime between 7:45 to 8:30. It's fabulous. I rarely set an alarm. But, yesterday would have been a good day to set an alarm. We somehow slept in until 9 and missed my 8:45 TB test appointment. Embarrassing! Fortunately, it wasn't a big deal to reschedule.

As David commented the other day, "her world is expanding." She goes from sitting to her belly (usually a modified face plant) and then scoots around on her belly, mostly in circles and backwards. She hasn't figured out how to go forward yet, but she appears to be within days of her first crawling expedition. It is so fun and crazy to see her progressing. We will be baby proofing our home soon.

Her 2nd tooth came through yesterday. We love watching her "chew" food. She also figured out the sippy cup a few weeks ago. Sometimes she drinks too much water and it all comes back up. I have to watch her and take it away if she's been at it for too long. Annika will still eat basically anything. It's great! Her new favorites are cheddar cheese, rice krispies, and strawberries. We have a little strawberry patch growing in our backyard. We have gone out there the past few days and picked a few to have with lunch. She will eat a regular-sized berry in two bites! (if I let her) I started cutting them up so she wouldn't go so crazy over the whole berry. However, it was fun to watch her lunge forward and try to eat the whole berry out of my fingers in one bite. We gave her a lime wedge a few weeks ago and she surprisingly liked it. In fact, she wanted more! crazy girl!

She says "mama" and "dada" really well. She mixes a few other consonant sounds in there occasionally. She has recently become quite vocal in public. She has a little happy yell that she likes to try out for attention at church. For the most part, she is calm and observant. So, it's always funny to hear her exclamations. In the past few days, I have been trying to teach her animal sounds. She loves it and I might be digging, but I think she is trying to make the "moooo" sound. I will have David assess tonight:)

Speaking of David... Annika LOVES her daddy! She gets so happy when he comes home and when we go visit him at his school. She happened to be awake when he left for work the other day and she cried when he left. It was very sweet and made David pretty happy:) I texted him that she cried and he said he was going to take a sick day to stay home with his sad little daddy's girl.

I started working part time as an LPN last week. I will be working about 4 shifts/month.  It is hard to leave Annika, but we feel that I need to maintain my license in case I did need to use it for a primary income for some reason.

We love little Annika so much! She is a precious little girl.

A few videos from the last few weeks: