Natalie: Nine and Ten Months

by Stephanie February 15, 2018

Dear Natalie, I’m sorry you are a victim of 2nd child syndrome. I’m sorry I haven’t given the world an update on you for two months. Please forgive me. Love, Mom.

My poor sweetie, I totally spaced on a 9-month update and now she is already 10 months old! In my defense though, January was basically the worst month ever. We were all incredibly sick for weeks. Sean was the worst off and was sick for the entire month, I was out for a good 3 weeks, and both girls had really wicked colds. They were both battling really high fevers and we could barely stand to do anything. And somehow, it’s already the middle of February and I was thinking the other day that it’s about time to start planning this girl’s 1st birthday party!

I say this every month, but just when I think it’s not possible to be any more obsessed with this babe, she gets more wonderful every day. Her personality is really coming out now. She is laughing all of the time and often in response to things like when Maddie makes a face at her. She’s clapping and dancing and has recently discovered crack in baby form: Elmo. As always, she loves to play with her big sister and I’m loving that they are already starting to play with each other. They love to chase each other back and forth upstairs, play in Maddie’s room, look at books, etc..

She’s also getting more frustrated about things she can’t do. The girls go to the playground often and she’s been getting mad that she can’t get out and run around like the bigger kids. I try to take her out and let her stand against the slide, go down the slide, and swings, but she is ready to run around and climb. She is getting closer to walking I think, but still needs support. Around the house, she walks against her walker or this little chair that she pushes around.

The other thing she gets super frustrated about is food. Dear Lord, this baby loves to eat. I’m hoping it sticks because once Maddie turned one, she became so picky and is still a terrible eater. She’s been practicing a lot with feeding herself with a fork and spoon and she really likes that. I think she is growing tired of baby food unless it’s in a pouch. The problem is that she wants to eat big pieces of food, like an entire chicken nugget, she wants to gnaw on it, but I’m so worried about choking. If I take it out of her hand, she cries and gets so mad at me, but she doesn’t like it when I try to break it into tiny pieces. She is also obsessed with drinking water from straw cups. She will take a big sip and only swallows it about 50% of the time, the rest of the time, she spits it out all over her shirt, laughs, and we have to change her a gazillion times a day.

Since the holidays, she has at least 3, if not a 4th tooth coming in on top so that’s 6 teeth total so far!

Still can’t complain about sleep. We obviously had a couple of weeks of struggles last month when she was sick, but other than that, she puts herself to sleep and sleeps through the night, 11-12 hours. She cries every time she shifts positions because she is looking for her pacifier, but I wait it out and she always goes back to sleep within a minute or two. She wakes up any time between 7-8am most mornings and takes a morning and late afternoon nap and then bedtime is around 8pm.

She cracks me up because in many ways, she is generally more irritable and gets more frustrated than Maddie’s personality as a baby, but she is also pretty chill. We can go to Disneyland and her naps will be all messed up and she rarely makes a peep the entire time we are there and then will go right to sleep when we get home. On the one hand, I want her to stay a sweet little baby forever, but I also can’t wait for her to get a little older so we can do more things outside the house and of course, to see her really start playing with big sister!