The other thing I am excited about? Sleep. At 6 months Baby Boy was starting to get the hang of sleep with longer stretches and even sleeping pretty much through the night on a few occasions. The last few months his sleep has got progressively worse. With teething and colds, wonder weeks and just general development sleeping is clearly tough for him. 

Around 8 months naps weren’t going so well which was tough because I wasn’t getting a break during the day. Most days he is having a decent morning nap now, but currently his night sleep is awful. Last night I took him into bed with me on his first wake up (only an hour after I put him to bed) and we stayed there all night. I couldn’t tell you how many times he woke up or fed, but I can tell you I got to stay in my warm bed all night which definitely beats sitting in his room in the cold. I know when he is sleeping ok he sleeps better in his room than ours, but after the hourly wake ups the night before I just needed to catch up on some sleep.

He will still be settled by his Dad if he doesn’t want milk, but he seems to want a lot of milk at the moment.

I was feeling rubbish about this and like it’s all my fault that I have another bad sleeper, which it probably is. All that feeding them to sleep and cuddling them at night means that they don’t go to sleep independently until they are around 4. Anyway I read this blog post by my favourite parenting guru Sarah Ockwell Smith (not that she would like the term I imagine) and now I feel a bit better about things. It says that at 9 months old babies normally wake up A LOT and it can be as bad as the newborn days. That’s not to say we shouldn’t do something about it, but I can expect it to get better.

Baby Boy is a pro crawler now having done it for 3 months. He can get across the room super fast to eat paper, shoes or any small toys he spots. So many people said he would be an early walker, but I’m not surprised that he still isn’t showing an interest in that step. All of mine have taken a while to get from the crawling to walking stage, but the girls took their first steps around their first birthdays.

Baby Boy can stand unaided for a few seconds and he can move around pretty easily by holding onto the furniture. I’ve also seen him climbing the stairs to reach a pile of paper before so I know he can do it, but he generally isn’t given the opportunity and he doesn’t seem particularly interested in climbing yet.

Meal wise he is eating a good range of food, but I can’t be bothered with the mess from Baby Led Weaning this time round so I haven’t given him some of the same options as his sisters. Our highchair tray (and table) also don’t have a smooth enough surface for suction bowls to go on so we can only put food directly on his tray. Of course I have tried giving him a bowl and plate but he just picks those up to eat accidentally throwing the food everywhere.

Baby Boy is still spitting up/ being sick. I don’t remember when this stopped with my eldest and I don’t really know if I need to worry about it. I haven’t really given him dairy yet and he has only had very occasional egg. He has seemed to be sick more in the past after I have eaten egg, but it is so hard to track the patterns.

Baby Boy loves to be around people. He loves his sisters and wants to play with them, but not necessarily when they want to play with him. He also doesn’t hugely enjoy the wrestling that they seem to go for with him.

He seems to love eating paper, shoes and any small thing he can get his hands on. 

He isn’t a big fan of being left alone or staying still. 

At 9 months Baby Boy is only really just starting to make intentional letter sounds. He is just starting to say “Mama” and “Baba” which normally means milk (or boob). He is repeatedly making “b” and “p” noises, and trying to repeat some of what we say. He was making some signs (that he developed himself) but he has lost those now.

When I was doing monthly updates with Little I talked about how much she weighed, nappy size and clothes size. Well baby boy is now in 9 to 12 month clothes, but the cloth nappies take up more space and it was just easier to switch all his clothes at once to the next size. We use one size nappies and I don’t have a clue how much he weighs or his height. He seems to keep getting bigger and heavier though so I’m assuming he’s doing ok. The results of being a 3rd child.

So the count down is now on until Baby Boy turns one. I just hope I can take the time to enjoy these days (with some sleep at night ideally).