Eleanor is 9 months old, today. And, boy, is she doing well. I was looking back over posts from when Rosemary was this age, and they’re remarkably close in when they’re doing things. I think Eleanor’s a bit more mobile than Rosemary was and will probably walk a little earlier. But Rosemary was pretty early to start with, at just over 11 months.
Mobility
Eleanor has certainly mastered the crawl, now. She’s also cruising around with great ease. She’s taken a couple of steps a couple of times, but isn’t walking yet. She can climb stairs, though not ours yet, as they’re too steep. She also tries to climb up various things (Rosemary’s bed on the floor in the hotel room, recently, onto boxes, onto the sofa (she can’t manage the sofa yet, but it probably won’t be a huge amount of time) and into washing baskets).
Speech
There’s an awful lot of ‘Da Da’! We’re fairly certain she has said ‘Thank you’ (obviously not perfectly enunciated!) a number of times. She seems to say ‘Dog’, as Rosemary did. She says ‘That’ (Dat) a fair bit and we think she also says ‘Stand’ (also sounds quite like Dat!). She says ‘Na Na Na’ quite often, which seems to mean milk. And she has a high-pitched, really loud, scream which she loves doing and which Rosemary enjoys encouraging and/or imitating (yes, we’re stock-piling paracetemol).
General learning/intellectual development
She’s fairly close to clapping and often claps our hands together. She waves (though it’s more of a high five, than a wave still). She happily crawls and cruises round the living room, office, bedrooms and even dining room and kitchen, exploring her toys (and frequently other people’s toys and things she’s not supposed to have, of course) for large chunks of time. She’ll come over for a cuddle or a chat now and then and then go back off to play. She knows that hitting the bilingual drum makes it sing (she was just doing this, but it was switched off, which confused her a little, but she was very happy when I switched it on). She’s getting into books again and has a couple of favourites at the moment (That’s Not My Truck and a cloth Baby Dinosaur book that Rosemary and Chris bought her in the National History Museum). She loves being singed to, and especially likes it when Rosemary sings a high-pitched Baa Baa Black Sheep to her at the dinner table.
eating
The baby-led weaning (BLW) is going fantastically, just as it did with Rosemary. She loves loads of food, especially fruit and steak, it seems. She’ll try pretty much anything and has yet to express any true disgust (unlike her sister, who is very fond of the word ‘yeuch’ these days, though has been improving over the last few weeks). She is not going to remain chocolate-free or ice-cream free for anywhere near as long as her sister. She already has a lot more juice to drink than Rosemary did, because she keeps picking up Rosemary’s cups and drinking from them. And she has had a taste of cow’s milk this way, too. Don’t think there will be any difficulties giving her a cup or two of it once she’s turned 1! She salivates when she’s us eating ice-creams and chocolates and other things she can’t have. In fact, she’s fairly desperate to try peanut butter, since she has to watch me eat it most mornings.
Breastfeeding
She’s still having plenty of milk and, like her sister did, has taken to feeding standing up, while I sit on the sofa. This is quite odd, though I think leads to less wind. She has feeds at roughly 3am, 6am, 8.30am, 12 noon, 3.30pm, 6.30pm and 9pm. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. On a Thursday, she misses out the 12 noon one with no problems whatsoever (she spends the day at my mum’s).
Clothing
She’s in a combination of 6-9 months and 9-12 months clothes, though definitely veering more toward the latter, now. At the moment, as the weather is very hot, she’s often just in a short-sleeved vest and light leggings or trousers. Sometimes, when it’s super hot, just a nappy. Despite being smothered in high-factor sunscreen, which is frequently reapplied, she’s developed a tan on her feet. She does have a tendency to suck/chew on her feet, actually, so perhaps she’s licking it all off (ewww!). No shoes yet, as we prefer to wait until she is walking and, even then, only put them on when walking outside, as Rosemary’s physiotherapist told us this was best for preventing later walking problems. Almost all her clothing is permanently stained, now. I had been very impressed at first, with the new washing gel (Ariel Active Gel), but it hasn’t been performing as well as I’d hoped of late and, even with the addition of a scoop of Vanish the clothes are still stained. Of course, a fair few of them were probably already stained from Rosemary, so Eleanor’s just adding to the collection.
Other
Eleanor is very happy, chilled and independent. She’ll quite happily play in the office while we work. She’ll chatter away to new people, though she’s recently clung to me when I’m attempting to hand her over to someone she’s not too familiar with.
Her relationship with Rosemary is pretty good. She loves playing with Rosemary and squeals with delight when Rosemary sings her song. She loves playing crawl chase with her and with some of her toys – e.g. there’s a toy where Rosemary pops the animals up and Eleanor pushes them down.
All in all, Eleanor is doing very well.
