Independent woman

I just put Piper down, after lowering her crib to the lowest setting because Little Miss is trying to pull herself up on everything now. In the bathtub, in her pack and play, in her crib, on the furniture, me, everything. Probably the best part about the pulling up is the look of pride on her face when she's successful. Priceless. Probably the worst part is her not feeling comfortable getting herself back down, which is why we found her screaming her head off at 3 am last night standing up in her crib. Hope she figures that part out soon!


Pulling herself up is cool and all, but my favorite new skill is hugging. She gives the BEST hugs - she squeezes super hard with the biggest smile on her face! And today there were lots of hugs and kisses combos. The weather may have sucked today - cold and rainy - and Piper may have been fussy for most of it due to the middle of the night play session she had, but honestly big squeezes and super sloppy kisses made up for all of that :-)

And while you can't see them in the picture above, Piper went from two to seven teeth during the week after I blogged last. Needless to say, it wasn't my favorite week of all of time, but I guess better to just bang them all out at once! She now has all four top front teeth and her left lateral incisor, which means she's able to take serious bites out of both food and non-food items. I found this out the hard way when I gave her my apple core last Friday to chew on when we were at a play date (which I've done a ton of times before with no issue ...). She bit the whole top of the core off. Luckily Reid was watching her more closely than I and we fished it out right away, but no more cores for Piper! Instead, it'll be bring on the bbq. Mmmmm ... ribs ...

She's also way into the water now - both in the pool and in the bath tub. She absolutely loves it! And while this definitely gets me psyched up for summer - we will definitely be swimming together every day that it's nice - it also freaks me out with the pool in the backyard. We're going to have to be SO careful ... and she's going to have to learn that she only goes in with us. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the huge smiles on her face as she dives into the pool at me or Reid and kicks and splashes all over the place. She doesn't usually rock the bikini, but her friend (and supposed future boyfriend according to his parents) Thomas was visiting so she decided to work it a bit. Check out that belly. Freaking awesome.
You can probably tell by the look on her face that she has quite the personality. She's already a bit of a drama queen and I predict will throw some huge tantrums in her day, but what's coming out the most right now is her independence. Standing up is part of that, but the other big deal is what she's eating. It is such a bear to feed her baby food now. She just wants to feed herself. Some days I worry that this means she's not getting everything she should be eating, but the fact is she's still growing so I can't worry too much about it. And this means some days she eats a lot (like last night's pasta with pesto, grilled chicken, roasted tomatoes with peas dinner), and other days, she barely eats (like today's lunch out at Rock Hill with Scotty and Eliza). It used to stress me out, but now I just go with it. If she's hungry, she'll eat, and I better just have lots of finger foods ready for her!

9 months!

While Piper turned 9 months last Tuesday, she didn't have her checkup until today ... so here are the latest stats!

Height: 28.5 inches - 85 percentile
Weight: 21 pounds, 12.5 ounces - 90 percentile
Head circumference - 17.5 inches - 50 percentile

I did have a friend ask today if they measured her thighs to see where those stood - I'm pretty sure those would be off the charts.

And honestly I can't believe how much she's changed since my last post. She's sitting up from laying down on her own (she actually did this for the first time the day of my last post and I just spaced it), and now she's doing it very gracefully and super often. It's very cute :-) She's also progressed from army crawling to real crawling, as of yesterday in fact! She still relies mostly on the army crawl/rolling combo for most of her mobility, but the fact that she's doing more than rocking now is pretty huge. And she waves and claps (I guess she was doing both of these before last time - sorry, Piper, I'm not doing a great job of chronicling everything!). She also says Nana and Mama (Nana before Mama ... grr), and Hi sometimes when she waves. She's a finger food pro at this point, with any kind of pasta being her favorite. Today, for example, she ate a huge portion of spinach and cheese ravioli at lunch. She LOVES to eat - a girl after my own heart.

And speaking of eating, there's also been a big change in terms of nursing - Piper weaned herself! A couple of days ago, she started biting when she was nursing (OUCH - yes, it was painful and crappy for me), and when I scolded her for it, she would dissolve into tears, but then do it again. So we've moved onto all bottles and she's super happy about it. I think a lot of it is that it's WAY faster, so she can get back to being busy sooner, and it's immediate gratification for her effort. As our pediatrician explained today, she now lacks the patience to nurse, which is totally normal (she said most kids will self-wean between 9 and 12 months), and would rather be onto bigger and better things. Even though we had our challenges with nursing,I was bummed about her weaning at first. I'd set a goal for myself of a year of breast milk, and with her onto just bottles now, I don't think we'll make it. I can't pump the amount of milk she drinks each day and this bummed me out a bit - after all, I am super goal oriented. But now I've come around and I feel good about it. After all, Piper is happy! We don't have to go through any sort of weaning drama and she's happy and healthy. Perfect. I bought my first can of formula today and we're going to try a bottle of that tomorrow. I'm going to keep pumping twice a day for now, but at some point, she's going to be on all formula before 12 months comes and that's A-okay.

So anyway, LOTS of changes are happening around here. I guess that's par for the course with an infant this age, but going through it all for the first time is unbelievable. It really is incredible!

Oh, and according to our pediatrician, she's cutting an entire mouthful of teeth right now. She's had two pop through in the last five days (upper right front and upper left lateral incisor) and has a LOT more in the works. Luckily, these teeth (knock on wood) have been way easier than the bottom two. She had one fussy day, but has continued to sleep through the night, and for the most part, be happy. She just rocks. I honestly can't get over it, or get enough of her :-)

Boston or BUST

Since it is Easter, and Piper's first Easter at that, I feel like I should post a couple of pictures of her with her Easter basket before we back up to last weekend's Boston trip. Between you and me, she's actually been enjoying playing with the eggs in the basket all week, but it was like she had just discovered them for the first time again this morning so I don't think she really minded. And this was the first time she got to play with the grass, which was probably her favorite part anyway!

And of course she had a cute dress for the day - the sweater was dumped due to the simply gorgeous weather! And who doesn't love playing with a diaper? Honestly sometimes I don't know why we ever buy her toes ...

Ok, so back to Boston.

I will say the trip was book ended with some less than ideal traveling behavior by the peanut. Gone are the days when Piper gets in the car, immediately falls asleep, and wakes up when we get somewhere. Now the lull of the engine only serves as background noise to either playing, screaming, and very occasionally, snoring. We had plenty of screaming both ways, but luckily the actual time spent in Boston rocked.

We arrived Thursday evening, giving Piper and I all day to have fun on Friday while Reid had meetings. First we visited Waggener Edstrom, where I worked pre-Piper, and it was so much fun because the last time these ladies say Piper was when she was just over two months old. This time, her personality was bursting at the seams! Next we headed to the Children's Museum for lunch and then two and a half hours of playing. Two and a half hours! Piper was in absolute heaven. We literally spent 99 percent of our time in the "crawler" section of the 0-3 room, where they had a wall of mirrors, a fish tank, a circular water bed hang out place, toys and other babies. Piper played and played until we had to leave before a meltdown happened from exhaustion. It was great to see her having so much fun!

And then Friday night was a little piece of heaven: Reid took care of Piper while I went out to dinner with two of my best girl friends. It was the first night I've gone out solo since Piper was born, and while I love her like crazy, it was so nice to get a little break and hang out with my friends. Thank you, honey!!

Saturday included a lot more activity. First brunch with our friends Julie and Rob, whom we stayed with for they weekend - exposing them to parenthood. They were definitely troopers, not batting an eye as baby crap exploded all over their apartment, and luckily Piper was super well behaved the whole time! Then it was off to Somerville to visit our friends Jay and Julie and their new (seven days!) arrival Lucy. She was teeny tiny and super sweet. Piper looked like a massive child comparatively, but I think we all enjoyed it because Reid and I got an infant fix and Jay and Julie got a glimpse into life becoming more normal than just sleepless nights with a very needy lump who you give and give and give to and don't get anything in return. I mean newborns are great, but it's a good thing they get bigger and turn into little people!

And from there we headed up to Malden where we had a play date with our friends Mary and Tim (and Stella) and Jasmine (and Mariko). At that point Piper was pretty exhausted, but with a little bit of food in her, she perked up and had a great time rocking out with her friends. Keep in mind she'd slept about 20 minutes all day at that point ... her stamina is unprecedented. Stimulate her and she will NOT give in to exhaustion.

And this picture sums up why Stella and Piper were the chunks at the play date. Stella stole the bag of puffs out of Piper's diaper bag - she knew what those little pieces of heaven were. In the picture, I'm pretty sure Piper just noticed what Stella had. Mine!

That night, Julie and Rob hosted an amazing dinner party and Piper charmed the pants off of people, clearly. Man, I'm getting tired just recounting our weekend! But the dinner party rocked - and it rocked that Piper went down at 8 and gave us the rest of the night to just hang out with friends and have fun. The next morning was brunch and then we were off. Exhausted but exceptionally happy after spending a bunch of quality time with friends we love!