1. Ellie is now walking along the furniture, unassisted
2. Ellie follows me into the kitchen, by crawling in there (kind of a long way for such a little girl)
3. Her (late) 9 month appointment stats were 17.5 pounds; 28 in (my long & lean girl)
4. She still looooves to swim, she is seriously a fish
5. We started her on "chunkier" foods, aka Stage 3 foods. I puree the food less.
6. Also, she is taking to "solid foods" At first, she didnt like chopped up whole green beans, but
now she is better at it. I put peas and cut up mandarin oranges on her tray and she feeds
herself :)
7. We are starting the weaning process **tear** I'll spend some time explaining that one.
Originally I planned on breastfeeding for the first year. However, when Ellie was 7 months old, I developed mastitis (infection of milk ducts) and my supply took a hit. I spent a month building it back up only to get it again last week. So down goes my supply again. Plus, she is at the age where she would rather play than nurse. And....she is eating more solids now and drinking less milk. But the main reason is that when I am pumping now, I am not able to express all of the milk. My body just isnt responding to the pump anymore. So needless to say, whats the point? I cannot replace what she eats when I am at work. Thus, the weaning process begins. This week I took away the 1200 nursing session. When I am home from work, she gets a bottle of half EBM and half formula. I do not pump. Next week, I'll drop the 1600 feed and the following week I'll drop the 0800 feed. In the meantime, whether I am at home or at work, her bottles are a mix of EBM and formula until I run out of my stored frozen EBM. She'll be on 100% formula in 3 weeks. I am sad. I cried when I gave her her first bottle (from me) on Monday. I know that I'll always be her mom and she'll always need me.....but this is like the last bodily connection. Gosh, first the umbilical cord then the breastfeeding ;) Now I am ok. Still sad, but so thankful we made it 10 months and that she is doing well with it. She is tolerating the formula just fine and isnt crying or refusing the bottle, wondering why isnt mom feeding me. Thank God for that. Ok now back to the list....
8. She has her 2 bottom teeth...came up at the end of May. She was such a trooper! Didnt seem
to affect her too much.
9. She loves to take big girl baths. If she tumps over, I can usually let her figure out how to get
back up.
10. She gets so excited to see the dogs. I think that she has always liked them but now they pay
attention to her. She even shares her food with Raider. He takes it so gently from her hand
and she laughs at his tickling tongue.
11. Jon can really make her laugh these days. There's nothing sweeter than a baby's little laugh.
