The Hals Family World Adventures: Hannah @ 9 Months! Waving, Sleeping, and Pure Delight!

This has quite possibly been my favorite month so far! Hannah has been SO MUCH FUN! And...she has been sleeping the best she has ever slept this month so I actually seem to have the energy to enjoy her and feel the joy of being with her. Full of giggles, determined to explore, and so loving and happy - our sweet Hannah is nine months old!

Sleep!!!

At 8 months 1 day Hannah was moved up to the "mobile baby" side of the infant room. (Bragging mother alert) They had an incoming infant and needed to choose one of the six babies to move up - and chose Hannah over others older than her because she is so very active and mobile! (Bragging over). Monday night? OMG She slept from 9 - 6:30!!!! I finally had to wake her up to feed her before I left for work! Crazy!!! Is every night like that? No, but we have had more good nights than bad nights lately and that...is a HUGE change!!! This month Hannah sleeping through the night is MORE normal than her not sleeping through the night. AHHHHHHH! AMAZING!

That said...I'm still not getting a ton of sleep (like...previous Beth would think it's not enough and a co-worker said "wait, you're excited to only get how much sleep?"), but seriously...it is amazing. What I mean by that is that Hannah has been going to sleep deeply enough that I can put her in her crib somewhere between 8 and 10. Sometimes when I go to move her to her crib she just isn't ready and needs to nurse and snuggle longer (judge away, but I am okay with that - I am gone all day long, she needs some mommy snuggle time!) Once my hands are free it is about an hour before I can crawl into bed. (There's SO much to do...an hour is cutting it as short as possible to get ready for bed myself, walk the dogs, clean up, prep for the next day, etc). So I crawl in bed at 11? Hannah wakes at 4 or 5. If she doesn't wake up until 6 something, I need to have woken up and showered and gotten most of the way ready by the time she does. So if she does sleep, I am still only getting a maximum of 5-6 hours (which to a new mom sounds AMAZING...to most others it sounds like not enough).

Accomplishments and Happenings This Month

She's waving now and it is super cute! When she waves it is a full body wave accompanied by a full big toothy grin! She has been doing some serious cruising this month! I also noticed that when she wants something that is on the floor/that she has dropped and she is standing, that instead of having to sit down to grab it, she actually squats down and picks it up and pops back up with ease! She has great balance and great "saves" - I have seen her actually save herself from falling over by grabbing something with one hand - and she manages to keep herself upright and prevent a wipe out. ...I was super impressed.

Standing and turning - super cute!

Always on the move

Or nom nom noming

(Below - one of the first days Hannah started waving) :)

She had a double ear infection this month :( but the doctor was super impressed by her pain tolerance and the happy demeanor she had even though she didn't feel well. She was quick to become extra fussy when she needed/wanted something, but overall I was amazed by how pleasant she was while she was sick and in pain.

She's beginning to understand "no" and contemplates what to do once we say no. We are working on redirecting and making sure that we follow through when we say no. ...You can see her processing and considering. But sigh, I guess it's time to start picking our battles!

We had a visit from a former student, Ben Laird - he's a cadet at West Point this year! (His family is the one that gave Hannah her first set of books with all the personalized messages before she was born). And Hannah loved him! We had a great evening learning about the first year at West Point, playing with Hannah and catching him up on how things have been going in Maryland. IT's always neat when my "worlds collide".

Cadet Ben Laird + Hals Family - Hannah's not quite sure what to make of his hat!

Thanksgiving Break was a wonderful blessing. We really enjoyed the time to ourselves as a family and spent Thanksgiving day itself enjoying a blissfully low key day with the Kunkle family. Four adults and two littles ones seemed like a very reasonable ratio for all of us and we had a nice afternoon and evening cooking and catching up.

Reading a book with her Daddy on Thanksgiving :)

the Maryland natives are bartering goods

Hannah playing in Lillian's box fort tunnel complex

Lillian + Hannah = Thanksgiving Cuties

Decorating for Christmas!

It finally arrived!!!

The missing bag that I gate checked in Sarajevo on June 21st arrived at our home in Silver Spring November 28th. If this bag could talk...

Our poor car seat. Will I trust the integrity of the frame anymore? Hell no. But am I hoping to wash the cloth cover and put it on our current frame - yep!!

Nom Nom Nom

Really wants to feed herself. For Hannah this month has been a month of transition. She's hungry...but only wants to eat a limited amount of bites per meal from a spoon. She is obsessed with learning to feed herself. So we usually start a meal out with yogurt or the pureed baby foods I have made (we're going to use them up, definitely not throw out all the tastiness and hard work!) and then she transitions over to other things. She likes peas, cheerios, LOVES cheese of all kinds, loves to gnaw on a raw carrot, apple, sweet potato even (we let her hold one while I was cooking thanksgiving weekend and it came back looking "attacked" by a little rodent) and the obliterates steamed sweet potato slices. A big recent (and incredibly messy) hit? Raspberries and blackberries! yum yum! The main issue is that her coordination of grabbing an item and successfully delivering it into her mouth isn't great yet. We're getting there! But that is the biggest contradiciton..."I want to feed myself!" but "I can't get food in my mouth" That said, through the month she has made leaps and bounds, perfected the pincer grasp and is continually becoming more adept. Very fun to observe!

No one is safe when Hannah starts flinging food.

I yam what I yam.

Growth and Appearance

She finally has more than fuzz! Not much more...but enough to be able to spike it a bit in the bath and to have a little bed head after a nap. Now the far more pressing question - what color is it?! So far it looks golden with hints of red during the day and brown at night. In the sunlight though it is undeniable that there is some red in there! Her eyes are a beautiful hazel too! At night they look most dark...and sometimes I wonder if they are just going brown but then when the light catches her eyes I see a teal blue rim and then green rippling through the brown. For her sake I really hope they stay this way - I LOVE them! She still has two adorable little teeth (although I really do think she is teething at that more are eminent...she started drooling like crazy this weekend and was extra fussy. We'll see!)

Size wise the 6-9 month clothes are getting too tight. The 9 month outfits fit...but are on their way out and the 12 month clothes are a nice fit - there's a few that are still a little big. We moved into 12 month pjs this week and they fit her a little too perfectly already! I like that all the 12 month stuff has grippy feet. For Hannah, that's quite helpful. When we went in for the ear infection she weighed 20 pounds exactly (8.5) months - so she has officially doubled her birthweight and is still growing! :)

Her Favorite Things

She still loves the fat plastic stackable rings, loves to play with plastic mardi gras beads, adores books, and has really been enjoying the elephant push toy the Grand Hals gave her when they visited. She also loves it when I grab a toy from her hand with my teeth and shake it back and forth like I am a puppy. ...She laughs and laughs. We often do this with a small stuffed animal to survive the oh-so-ridiculously-squirmy diaper changes.

She has been so so so ridiculously cute lately! SO happy and quick to laugh! The past few weeks have just been the best!

I dare you to look at this picture and not smile. :)

Communication

She has gotten very good at saying "Da da" and often does when she is happy or wants attention. She is hungry she makes a pleading "mmmmmmmmmmm" sound. The day she turned 9 months old she said "Ma Ma" when asking to be fed! :)

Puppies

She loves her puppies so much! She has developed a bad habit (which we are discouraging/redirecting accordingly) of casting cheerios and food bits to her lowly subjects and laughing as they scramble. Sometimes it seems regal and mocking, other times it is adorable fascination. But she often stops when we tell her no.

She also loves to "play bow" to the puppies. I had noticed a strange behavior that I found adorably funny...but I couldn't quite figure out its origin/why it tickled me so much. ...Hannah would crawl around the house and jerk her head downward as she was crawling around. it was strange. Then, one evening while we were upstairs in her room, she was playing with the puppies while I put laundry away and she was just giggling and giggling over and over. When I studied what was happening I realized she was crawling up to Holly and play bowing - slapping both hands down and lowering her head with her bottom in the air - just like a puppy inviting you to play with them (Holly does this with us all the time and we often respond with similar gestures and then play with her). Sure enough, Hannah was mimicking this behavior and some of the times the dogs were bowing back! Regardless, each time she bowed, she burst into a fit of giggles! It was such a fun interaction to witness and had me smiling for days! :)

Hannah also enjoys it when I roll a ball to her - she then adeptly picks it up and shares it back with me (she's not good at rolling it back yet). Some times if the mood is right Holly will take the ball instead and then bring it to me, drop it, and I roll it to Hannah, she picks it up and hands it to Holly, etc. Each time Holly takes something from Hannah she laughs and claps her hands! SO cute!!!

I have also been trying to help her learn to pat/pet the dogs instead of just pulling their fur and she has finally caught on. She loves to crawl to Chance and pat him. :)

Chance with his jingle bell collar and Hannah playing with the lights...

He is the sweetest dog on the planet.

Daddy

Still not sleeping well...it's not really linked to Hannah's sleep, it's just shallow, crappy sleep each night for Daniel. We're not sure why. But we are sure that finally caving and becoming a coffee drinker (just one cup in the morning) has been a transformational experience for Daniel! The first weekend he drank coffee was he spoke to me as if he was Rob Lowe the entire day! Epically funny!

I adore this picture!

He also loves loves loves everything Christmas, so it has been a fun couple weeks around the house with Christmas music and a Christmas tree. (We got one. ...it managed to get lights and looked pretty if you squinted and blurred the lights. We also agreed it was totally okay to give up and not bother with ornaments. haha. Next year maybe?)

Daniel & Hannah selfie! Trying out our new camera remote and showing off Hannah's beautiful Christmas outfits :)

Hannah & Daddy selfie! Hannah @ 9 months!

Mommy

This month has been one of my absolute favorites! She has just been so much fun! And she has been sleeping! And she has been easier!!! She is more content to explore and play - on her own, but with me close by. But there have been several nights where I have been able to give her different things to do while I cook dinner and actually managed to cook dinner without it being a disaster and without having a totally unhappy baby! And I didn't feel like I had outright ignored her either! Awesome! Spending a week with her over Thanksgiving was also wonderful and I really enjoyed catching up with Hannah and "resyncing" with her.