9 Month Update

Justin in Daddy's First Football Jersey

Justin and Mommy in a Petting Zoo

Well, Justin turns 9 months old next week! I can't believe it! Here's what we've been up to:

1) We've finally worked through some major sleep issues. As soon as Justin learned to stand up in his crib about a month and a half ago, he would get up over 3 times at night and wanted us to come see him practicing his new skills. I also got into a bad habit of nursing him to sleep, so he would scream hysterically when I would try to lay him down fully awake. For anyone struggling with sleep issues, here's what worked for us!
* Make sure everything is a good temperature. For us, this meant putting Justin to sleep in his sleepsack so that his cold sheets wouldn't wake him up. Yeah, he has some high maintenance tendencies. :-)
* Follow the same sleep ritual every night. For us, this meant starting nightly baths, but it's been soooooooo worth it!
* Put the baby to sleep half an hour earlier. I was amazed at how magical this was for us! I hated to do it at first, since it meant less time him. But, now I get the same amount of quality time, but less screaming.
* Put baby down awake, and with no pacifier. I think this was the other thing that got us into trouble. We relied on the pacifier for months, and he'd go to sleep almost immediately! But, he began to look at his pacifier as a teether/toy and ended up chucking it out of his crib in the middle of the night. Then he'd wake us up to come get it for him and the cycle would start over again.
* Instead of walking away during the screaming, it helped us to just sit on the floor by his crib so he knew we weren't abandoning him. Sometimes this meant sitting there for an hour or longer!
* Don't pick up the baby during the screaming. However, rubbing Justin's back and patting him on the head were okay for us.

So, after about 5 days of horrible nights, things turned WONDERFUL. Justin will sleep from 7:30PM until somewhere between 3 and 5AM, eat, and will then sleep again until 6:30AM (when I have to get him up to get ready for daycare). We're going on about 2 weeks of great sleeping, and now he doesn't even whimper when I put him to bed! But, I'm not naive enough to think this will last forever. I'm sure a day will come when he learns how to climb out of his crib, and a new sleep adventure will begin (if not before then).

2) Justin now likes walking along the furniture, and can stand unassisted for about 8 seconds now. This is exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time.

3) Justin loves watching toys fall. This can be dangerous! One night he was in the tub and his toy turtle fell overboard. As I was reaching down to get it for him, he literally slipped out of the tub trying to get it and was stuck upside down in a heap of towels! I was laughing so hard (does that make me a bad mom?). Good thing those towels were there!

4) Justin thinks animals are hilarious. He giggles like crazy around them, and is really getting into books with pictures of animals. Bill's parents have a black cat, and whenever I open his animal book he reaches right for the picture of the black cat and starts laughing. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to understand that animals don't like their ears, tails, or hair pulled very much. :-)

5) Justin is slowly starting to link different sounds to different objects. He crawled over to Bill's desk chair and guitar today saying "da-da". But, he never reaches for Bill saying "da-da". Maybe it's all coincidence, but it's fun to think he might have a better idea of what's going on than we adults think.

6) Justin loves balls...especially tennis balls. He rolls them and chases them and it's a good half an hour of entertainment.

7) Justin believes he lives in a Willy Wonka world where everything he is able to pick up is edible. I've caught him lately with pennies, dust bunnies, shoes, and paper. At least he shows me what I need to clean. :-)