Let’s just start this out by stating a fact: months 8 and 9 were tough. At least, they were tough for me. I don’t know if it was the sustained lack of sleep or the increasing load at work or the general chaos that comes from trying to parent two children, feed a family of four, stop the house from falling into complete squalor and occasionally remembering to shower, or perhaps some combination of these things. But one way or another, despite having lots of help from relatives and a husband who always steps up and pulls his weight, I managed to wander into the darkness and it’s been quite the struggle to find my way back to the light.

Having said that, I must also add that Suzanna is a delight. Really. Sure, she doesn’t like to sleep through the night, and she grizzles a bit here and there and I had to endure a week or so of her trying to bite me each time I fed her around the time that her two bottom teeth popped through. But overall, she’s a sweet, smiley, easy going soul.

Suzanna mastered sitting up steadily during her 8th month, and she sprouted two tiny razor sharp teeth. She finally learned to sleep without her miracle blanket swaddle, and I finally stopped going into feed her during the night. Breaking Suzanna of the miracle blanket habit was no easy feat, but it needed to happen because otherwise she would work her way loose and then cry until someone went back in to re-wrap her. Re-wrap, sleep, wriggle, cry. Re-wrap, sleep, wriggle, cry. You get the picture. But at least she was sleeping when she had the blanket on. Without it…not so much. We finally started wrapping her with one arm out, and then re-wrapping her with both arms in after the early morning wake-up call (~4-5am ish) to try to get a few extra hours of sleep. We tried to alternate arms at nap times and bedtime, and after what felt like forever but was actually only 2 or 3 weeks, it eventually had the desired effect and she got used to sleeping with her arms unencumbered.

Stopping the night feedings was more of a sanity saving measure than anything else. I just couldn’t function any more. And in retrospect, what had started out as a genuine hunger and need for milk had turned into a comfortable habit and a familiar way to fall back to sleep in the night. Once Mark took over night duty, Suzanna quickly figured out the new situation and stopped seeking to night nurse. (Duh. It all seems so obvious, right? It didn’t feel obvious at the time.)

Somewhere along the line, Suzanna started babbling semi-intelligible words. Her first word was “mum-mum-um”, which I like to think was all for me, but in reality I think it’s her word for “feed me, please. I’m hungry.” She also says “ba-ba-ba” and “da-da-da” and makes a variety of shouty “ha!” sounds and an array of hissing noises that make it sound like she’s practicing Parseltongue. Amusing.

And then Suzanna got 5th Disease. Which was harmless enough to her – a low grade fever, some general achiness and crabbiness, followed a few days later by a rash that covered most of her body for about 3 days – but really potentially quite bad for pregnant women, as it can cause fetal anemia. And guess who was helping out with Suzanna at the peak of her fever and fussiness, right when the disease is at it’s most contagious? Why my sister Katie, of course. Who is pregnant. Of course. Short cut here to let you know that everything turned out fine. Katie didn’t get sick, the baby in her belly is fine and all’s well that ends well. But at the time, the stress and worry just about did me in.

And while all this was going on, I had a business trip to New York and another one to Phoenix and two new employees joined my team at work.

So July was….a challenge.

August was also challenging…in more of a fun way than July’s “OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP” way, but definitely still not a relaxing month. Mark’s cousin Naomi came to visit, and then my cousins David and Tina were in town for 2 weeks and my Dad had a birthday and I helped throw a baby shower for Katie and Marc and took two more short business trips to San Jose and Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Suzanna decided to start crawling and determined that eating mush was for people with no teeth and she would much prefer to feed herself now, thankyouverymuch. Cue much messiness and a sudden scramble to figure out what foods would be suitable for Suzanna to have a go at. For the record, her favourite food at the moment is cheese. The girl seriously loves cheese.

The crawling kicked in about a week before she turned 9 months old. Suzanna flat out refused to go to sleep the evening after Katie and Marc’s baby shower, and spent a full hour slowly but surely crawling back and forth between me and Mark on the living room floor. Since then she’s made a lot of progress and can now scoot across the floor increasingly fast. She does the “scoot and crawl” combo, alternating between clambering along on all fours, sliding on her butt and then spider walking with her knees off the ground and her butt in the air. She can now also pull herself up to standing, although she soon wobbles and falls back to the ground. Cue a quick round of baby proofing.

And so here we are. It’s September. Suzanna is 9 months old. She doesn’t sleep with a swaddle. She doesn’t nurse at night. She babbles. She has two teeth. She feeds herself solids. She can crawl.

It’s all going to be OK. Better than OK.

They tried to make me take a nap now but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been yawning, yes I’ve been cranky don’t you know know know
I ain’t got the time but my Dad don’t like my cryin’
He’s tried to make me take a nap now but I won’t go go go

I’d rather be awake with Rose
I ain’t got patience for repose
Cause there’s nothing
There’s nothing you can teach me
That I can learn while I’m asleep in bed

I took a short snooze in the car
Don’t you know that this will take me far?

They tried to make me take a nap now but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been yawning, yes I’ve been cranky don’t you know know know
I ain’t got the time but my Dad don’t like my cryin’
He’s tried to make me take a nap now but I won’t go go go

Mum said ‘why do you think you here’
I said ‘I got no idea
I’m gonna, I’m gonna miss out on somethin’
so I always keep the yellin’ near’
She said ‘I just think that you’re tired out,
this me, yeah baby, and the rest’

They tried to make me take a nap now but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been yawning, yes I’ve been cranky don’t you know know know

I don’t ever wanna nap again
I just ooh I just need a friend
I’m not gonna spend two hours
have everyone think I’m part of the snoozing trend

It’s not just my pride
It’s just ’til these tears have dried

They tried to make me take a nap now but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been yawning, yes I’ve been cranky don’t you know know know
I ain’t got the time but my Dad don’t like my cryin’
He’s tried to make me take a nap now but I won’t go go go.

In the past month, Suzanna has gone from really struggling to roll over from back to tummy to simply lifting up her legs and flipping over onto her stomach like it’s no big deal. She can also roll from tummy to back, although she’s not as keen on this move. And Suzanna can sit up! Sure, it’s still a little wobbly, but she gets a little stronger and a little more stable every day. She’s more sure of herself on when she’s on her tummy too – pushing her arms out straight and holding her head up high, swimming in small circles on the floor to reach for objects of interest in her surroundings.

This has also been a big discovery month on the food front. Suzanna likes sweet potato, butternut squash and avocado. She likes cheerios and rice biscuits. And she loves mushed up babyfood prunes. Which is just as well….because Suzanna’s body….needs the assistance. We’ve had to hold off on introducing applesauce, bananas and cereals in general while her digestive system catches up with her appetite. She’s still nursing up a storm, and we’ve made it this far on breastmilk without needing to supplement with any formula, but I don’t know how much longer this can be sustained. The milk factory has been holding forth a steady supply, but demand has risen and inventory is running low. I love nursing, but I hate pumping (I mean, does anyone really like pumping? No.). But we’ve made it this far, and I’ll keep on keeping on and generally just try to do my best whilst keeping my sanity.

Oh! You know what else is new this month? Cloth diapering! I finally jumped in and did what I’ve wanted to do for aaaaages, and it feels good! It’s not hard. It’s really not that messy. And I wish I hadn’t been such a chicken about making the switch in the first place. After reviewing seemingly endless amounts of information on the interwebs about cloth diapering, I felt even more confused than before I started to try to educate myself. There are so many options! Pre-folds and snappis and covers, all-in-ones, pocket diapers and liners and special laundry detergents and so many strong opinions out there on what is best and why and OH MY GOODNESS, MAKE IT STOP. So I did what many of us do in this digital age – I turned to Facebook and I asked my friends – people who actually know me – for their advice. And then I took it. Well, some of it.

I ended up going the pocket-diaper route, and I got an assortment of Bum Genius 3.0, Happy Heiny and Fuzzibunz diapers. I like the Happy Heinys, I really like the Bum Genius and I don’t like the Fuzzibunz much at all. We’ve currently got 12 cloth diapers, and Suzanna goes through about 6 each day, so I’m washing a load of nappies every other night or so, and then hanging the diapers out to dry on our drying rack. I’ve ordered a couple more just to pad out our stash, but so far it’s working fine. We’ve got a front loading washing machine that zips through the laundry efficiently, and maybe I’m still in the honeymoon phase, it hasn’t felt like a lot of extra work. And SQUEEE! Have you seen a baby in a cloth diaper? SO CUTE!

One more new thing from this month – joint bathtime for Alexander and Suzanna. Now Suzanna can more or less sit up, I have been putting her in the big bathtub (supported by me, of course) for a quick rinse after dinner, then topping the tub up for Alexander to use. The first time Alexander saw Suzanna in HIS BATHTUB he had a total meltdown, but once he realised that he was at liberty to join her, his attitude was transformed. Now he asks for “baby Suzanna” to get in the bath with him, and he hands her bath toys and chatters at her non-stop, and she absolutely loves it. So fun!

Something that is not new this month, something that is in fact getting very old, is the waking-up-in-the-night malarky. Remember when Suzanna used to sleep through the night? It’s been so long now that she hasn’t that I barely remember it myself, but I know that it happened. Suzanna randomly wakes up at least once every night sometime between 2am and 5am, sometimes twice, sometimes more. It’s brutal. Since it’s random times (not the same time each night), and since she always really wants to nurse, I tend to think that she’s genuinely hungry. And I do want to nurse her. But sleep would be so nice. I love sleep. I miss sleep.

So I tell myself it won’t be forever and try to wait patiently for her to grow out of needing me in the night. Then when (if) that ever happens, I’m sure I will lie awake hearing phantom baby cries despite the silence and I’ll want to creep into her room just to peek into her crib and watch her chest rise and fall as she sleeps sprawled across the mattress, because I love her.

Called me into the bathroom this evening to witness his latest feat of greatness. He seemed particularly proud of the duck balancing on his forehead.

"Who is your favourite team, Alexander?"

"Peepa’s team!"

"You didn’t come to get me! I was here for two weeks!"

I sang “You Are My Sunshine” to Suzanna two mornings ago, as I was cleaning her face up after feeding her some pear mush, while Alexander was playing happily on the sofa nearby. When I finished the song, Alexander popped his head up over the back of the couch and said “Mummy, I am your BIG sunshine. Baby Suzanna is your LITTLE sunshine. Can you sing it to me now?”. And he scampered over and climbed up on my lap for a snuggle while I sang to him.

And my heart exploded.

You can find me here. I mostly post/reblog funny pictures of squirrels, dogs, dinosaurs, stuff about Star Wars, Lego, stuff I find on flickr, interesting quotations and other shiny things that remind me of specific people.

Come join the fun.

To help celebrate her half birthday, we fed her some mush. She seemed to find the process rather entertaining, although I don’t think much mush made it into her mouth. Her first food was smooshed up banana. We’ve also given her little bits of rice cereal and apple sauce, and tonight at dinner, Katie let Suzanna gnaw on a nub of dill pickle. I’m sure the pickle is probably against all the baby feeding rules, but hey, Suzanna honestly seemed to like that flavour more than she’s enjoyed anything else we’ve given her! Suzanna doesn’t seem to like fruit juice – we’ve tried giving her watered down apple juice and pear juice. She’s far more interested in getting some MILK PLEASE NOW.

For the past few weeks, Suzanna has been waking up SO HUNGRY between 4.30 – 5.30am. Fortunately, once she has nursed, I can usually get her to go back to sleep for an hour or so. Unfortunately, the timing often means that it’s really difficult for me to get any sort of meaningful sleep in before it’s time to get up and get on with my day. Also, all that grumbling early in the morning tends to wake up Alexander too, which means even if I can get Suzanna back to sleep, Alexander is wide awake. So between the two of them, Mark and I are tired, tired, tired.

Lack of parental sleep aside, it’s been a good month. Suzanna likes to play in her exersaucer and has rolled over a few times when playing under the gymini. She doesn’t really like rolling over, and she gets cross if she’s left on her tum for an extended amount of time. She doesn’t sit up yet, but she’s working on it. I’m actually wondering whether her reflux makes it uncomfortable to sit up? Sometimes she tries to sit up, only to throw her head back and make her legs straight and keep her body as stiff as a board, whilst grumbling about the horror of almost sitting up. She doesn’t do this if we seat her in the bumbo though. Hmmm.

The reflux is still here. We stopped her meds a few days ago just to see what would happen, and after about 20 hrs she was spitting up and crying and generally letting us know she was uncomfortable. Thus she is back on the meds again, now up to 1.5ml of ranitidine 2x per day.

Measurements at 6 months: weight 16.4oz (75%), height 27″ (90%) and head circumference 42cm (50%).

She’s wearing 6-12months clothes these days. One of the nice things about summer having arrived in full force is that she doesn’t really have to wear much at all – a little onesie and some socks and she’s good to go. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from playing dress up every now and then.

Ahh, Suzanna. So smiley and sweet. Love that little girl.