Nine Months In, Nine Months Out!

  (This post has a lot of details on Ryder's developement, mostly for my own record and for any family who is interested)

    Ryder is nine months old today!  I can't believe it!  I swear we just had his six month check up a couple weeks ago.  He'll be ONE before I know it!  He is right on track developmentally.  He is in the 50th percentile for height, 25th for head circumference, and 4th for weight.  Haha, he's just a little guy, but he always has been, so it's ok.  Our doctor told me to help him beef up a little I can start adding butter or olive oil to all his veggies.  Also we can give him avacados, whole milk cheese and yogurt, salmon, shredded meats, and some other food with healthy fats.  So, he pretty much has the dream diet!  He doesn't seem to mind the butter at all haha.  He is still nursing well, and the goal is to continue until he's one.  We'll see if we make it, he's so curious and easily distracted, it's sometimes hard to get him to focus on the task at hand haha.  He has learned how to wave hello.  It's the cutest thing.  He kinda flaps his whole arm up and down :)

 He has been talking all the time and adding new sounds everyday.  I love his little voice.  He is not crawling yet.  If  i put him on the floor, he is incredibly stubborn and would rather sit there and cry than make any effort to move to get a toy, haha.  He'll get it eventually, and in the meantime i'll just keep giving him lots of chances.  He loves playing peekaboo.  It makes him laugh so much.  He also loves to play "fetch" with me.  Fetch, as in, he drops his toys off the side of the high chair, exersaucer, couch, bed, over and over again, and i pick the up for him over and over again.  Fun for him, not so much for me!  I'll just count it as my exercise for the day.  He also LOVES to dance.  He bounces up and down to anything with a beat, any music, even church hymns haha.
     His top four center teeth are coming in and he's actually been doing really good with teething this time.  He usually only fussy about it at night.  One of his lateral incisors (tooth next to the center ones) is going to beat the rest, in fact it'll probably cut through in the next day or two.  So he'll have a goofy little side tooth by itself until the rest come in, which shouldn't be very long.  His sleep has been all over the place thanks to teething.  He goes to sleep at 8 and sleeps until about 4:30 or 5, waking maybe once.  Then i usually just bring him in to nurse and snuggle with me. That usually buys me some more sleep, but never past 7:30.  He is always wide awake and ready to go by then.  His naps (or lack of) are terrible!  We used to have him sleep in his little swing because that's the only place he would take a nap, but he's too big for it now.  So i have been putting him down in his crib and he HATES it.  He refuses to sleep in there for naps, he just screams and cries.  I go in and comfort him every 5 minutes, and that goes on for about 45 minutes.  Then i get him out and give him lots of snuggles to show i'm not torturing him.  It's so hard!  This has been going on the past two weeks or so and it's finally starting to pay off!  The past couple days i only have to go comfort him once or twice before he falls asleep.  Yesterday he didn't even cry at all!  He has only slept for about 45 minutes in there at most, but it's better than nothing!

    He is such a BUSY, stubborn, difficult, amazing, sweet, funny baby and i wouldn't change a thing about him.  I love him more than i could ever express!