Pebble – 9 months

Pebble turned nine months old this week. Nine months! She’s a proper little madam now, she’s already looking and acting like a toddler, and I’ve well and truly lost my baby girl. Pebble is becoming a real bruiser too, she’s climbing everything, and is obsessed with standing up. She climbs all horizontal and vertical surfaces. Yes, vertical! Doors, cupboards, windows, walls. She spiderwoman’s her way up and looks around for whatever she can grab and tug crashing down onto her head. She also 4-wheel drives over large obstacles – mum’s exhausted body, her little couch, a pile of books and toys, as she motors on to her next target. Not to mention crawling through her Ikea tunnel (best buy ever!). Needless to say, she is keeping me VERY busy.

Playing on the lawn on a gorgeous spring day

All this movement makes for some hungry work, and it shows in Pebble’s new found appetite. She loves feeding herself finger foods, with current favs being baked pumpkin, boiled pasta spirals, sticks of cut of cheese, strawberries, stewed fruit pieces, and anything that comes from mum or dad’s plate. She’s also drinking from her sippy cup and generally loving the world of food. Thank goodness! I was beginning to wonder if she was my child! Hopefully this love of food continues….

Feeding ducks at the duck pond (in her new big girl stroller)

Sleep is getting a lot better most of the time. We had a bit of a fight at nap time yesterday, but last night she slept from 11ish to nearly 7am without a peep. Of course, mama worry set in and at 5am I couldn’t resist creeping to her room to check on her. She was sleeping soundly and I’ve never heard a more wonderful sound – her little puffs of breath and sleepy sighs. Ahhhhh.

Welcoming Daddy home from work

One of the most interesting developments in recent weeks is a burst in language comprehension. If I start to read aloud from memory the first few lines of one of her favourite books, Pebble will go and find it and hold it up, smiling widely! If I say “where’s [insert name of any number of favourite toys]” She goes and finds it. She has shown some understanding for a couple of months, but now it’s just so spot on and has become a favourite game to play. Of course, the favourite books are the same ones that she loved when she was only four months old. How does that happen? And she’ll listen to them again, and again, and again…strangely none of them are by one of my favourite authors, Mem Fox. She won’t have a bar of The Green Sheep! I’ll keep trying.

I think I say it every month, but I really can’t believe how quickly this time has flown, and in no time at all I really will have a toddler on my hands. I’m relishing every minute (well, nearly every minute) and will always remember this time at home, just the two of us, as one of the happiest times in my life.

Love ya, Gert!