Dominic - 9 Months Old

Dominic has to be one of the happiest babies ever. He is just a little giggle-puss lately, and has the biggest smiles for everyone. He plays so independently when I need him to, and LOVES to surf around the furniture in our living room, or around his toys, or from one item to another. Only three more months of Maternity leave. I better make the most of it! 

These photos are kind of fuzzy, so we may try retake them, but we ran out of time!

Weight: 21lb. (Last week when we weighed him. This is actually only like the 20-25th percentile which seems really low. His huge head and chubby cheeks make him look bigger than he is I guess!)
Length: 28.5 inches (around the 75th percentile it looks like)

Likes:

• Eating. Although he's started getting picky about textures. All of a sudden some solids/finger-foods are making him gag. I always thought I'd do all homemade baby food, but he's had more store-bought pouches lately than I care to admit! 
• Clicking his tongue. If he clicks it and we click back, we can go back and forth for quite a while. We get bored of it long before he does. 
• Sherlock (or any animal really). If we say, "Where's puppy?!" He will perk up and look around for Sherlock. He unleashes the biggest smile and giggle when he finds him. 
• Splashing during bath time.
• His new big boy car seat! We moved him up to the Clek Foonf, and he's been loving it. 
• Flipping to his tummy. All the time... It makes diaper and outfit changes incredibly difficult!
• Blue things. If there is a bucket of toys, he seems to really gravitate to the blue ones, and will almost always pick those out first. Interesting!

Dislikes:

• Having his face and hands wiped
• Clipping his nails
• Plain pasta noodles and boerenkool (this will change... I'm determined)

Notes:

• He is a very cautious boy. If he's surfing around furniture and toys, he is always conscious of where he puts his foot next, and carefully and intentionally takes each step. He rarely has falls (for now) because of this. 
• On September 8 he discovered he could scoot backwards on his bum using his feet to push off. Strange boy!
• He is nursing 2x per day, and has 2 8oz bottles of formula as well. He also has three meals per day of solids. 
• He started flipping to his tummy mid-month, and this caused a bit of a sleep regression. There was a week where he stopped sucking his fingers to self-soothe, and flipped to his tummy in his crib constantly and cried and cried, and woke up lots. He seems to have figured it out now and actually sleeps quite well!
• He has now learned to drink with a straw! Yay! He loves his water cup, and has a few good gulps of water with lunch and dinner. 
• He will stand holding onto his table toy and "dance" or bounce with the music. 
• At midnight on September 21, when he was quite sick, he was crying in his crib and I looked at the monitor and saw him sitting up. WHAT?! Since when?! If his PJ's don't have socks/footies on them, he can sit up in his crib and lay back down on his own. He has also started going from sitting, to laying on his tummy, back to sitting outside the crib now.
• Not long after learning to sit up in his crib, he discovered he could STAND in his crib! Lots of fun for him... kind of stressful for us. We have to rearrange his room so he can't reach the drapes (we have the string for blinds way up already). He throws his teddy bear out of the crib and then whines because it's gone. Typically though, if he's tired (aka just going down for a nap), he will do this for a minute, and then lay himself back down and go to sleep. So far so good. I'm expecting some challenging weeks/months as he discovers more independence!
• He is so so close to crawling! I half expect it will happen within the week.
• Dom had his first terrible cold, which lasted about a week. He still has residual cough, but the rest of the cold symptoms are gone now. Thank goodness!!
• He is at the copycat age now. He snorts and wrinkles his nose as a greeting, he hits items if we hit them, he clicks his tongue if we do, he tries to copy noises, he tries to mimic faces. So cute! 

A typical/ideal day:

6:00a - Wake up

6:15a - Nursing on both sides

7:00a - 5TBSP of baby oatmeal

7:30a - Walk the dog around the neighborhood

8:30a - Nap 1

10:00a - Wake up from Nap

10:15a - 8oz bottle of formula

12:00p - Lunch time (usually some sort of finger food. Occasionally a puree as well)

3:00p - Nap 2

2:30p - Wake up from Nap

2:45p - 8oz bottle of formula

4:15p - Dinner time (usually a puree or mash of some sort, and some finger food to top it off. I find he's been eating less at hes meals lately. Probably not in a growth spurt anymore). 

6:00p - Bedtime routine (Bath sometimes, PJ's, nursing, stories)

6:30p - Bed for the night! He sleeps right through :)

And he continues his trend of thin, chunky, thin, chunky...

Always snuggles his blankie to fall asleep

I posted this picture on a Facebook page to see what other people would have named Dom, and the first few responses from people gave him names like Lexie. Haha! I didn't think he looked like a girl, but that's okay! 

Sherlock has found the place to be while Dom is eating...

He discovered Yoda is on the front cover and the first page of this book, and loves flipping it back and forth to compare. 

Some days I think Dom must be the happiest baby ever. Other days, I wonder how I'm going to make it until bedtime!

Mom, my bear is outside my crib now!