Nothing Is Worth More Than This Day: Nola @ 9 Months

I completely flaked on writing Nola's 8 month post in September. I know...bad, right? To top it off, when I took her 8 month pictures, I forgot to put Raggedy Ann in them. Well, I've forgiven myself and moved on, so here's the 9 month post:

Nola turned NINE months old on October 27th! Here's what she's up to these days...

She went to the doctor on November 1st for yet another ear infection, accompanied by fever. She weighed 20 lbs, 12 oz.
She still takes 8 oz bottles, now only when she wakes up. She still eats a fruit for lunch and a vegetable for dinner. I broke down and started buying Gerber baby food. I simply don't have time to make her food while I'm working. Plus, she's moved up to stage 3 foods, which means that meat has been added to some of them. I can't bring myself to put meat in the food processor. Gross. Her favorite foods are apples, bananas and the chicken/rice/vegetable blend. She also likes the spaghetti, but makes a giant mess with it. Last week, I introduced the finger food puffs and yogurt drops. The first effort was completely unsuccessful and resulted in a lap full of puffs and drops. She's getting the hang of it, though and sometimes even gets them in her mouth on her own now. She really likes the banana flavored puffs.
She still wears size 3 diapers and we're transitioning up to 9-12 month clothes. She can still wear some 6-9 month stuff, but a lot of it is pretty snug.
Nola is completely crawling on her hands & knees now. She can transition fully from any position to another (sitting, laying down, crawling). She is a fast crawler and can get to anything she wants very quickly - especially any shoes or electrical cords that happen to be within her reach.
She started pulling up on furniture recently and now pulls up on everything. When we go in to get her out of her crib, she's usually standing up, holding onto the rail and jabbering/yelling. (This is one of my favorite things in the world. I love opening that door and seeing the joy on her face.) They had to move her crib at daycare because she was pulling up on the windowsill and looking out the window instead of sleeping. She even cruises just a little bit - maybe a step or two at the most.
She rarely stops babbling these days. We hear lots of "babababa". Sometimes, she varies her syllables and she often varies her intonation, which makes it pretty funny. One day, it sounded like she said, "Lordy, Lordy, Lordy". She imitates "bababa" when we tell her bye bye, but she doesn't wave consistently.
When Nola and Caleb went to Hot Springs in October, Pops taught Nola to bang on her highchair tray when he chanted, "We want food!" Now she does it here and giggles every time.
She is laughing a lot more now. She laughs at pretty much anything Caleb does and gets beside herself with laughter when Rudy tickles her. She laughs when I clap for her too. She's a very happy girl.
When she laughs, we get a good view of her two little teeth. The first one showed up on 9/28/10 and the second one popped through on 10/31/10. Both were ushered in by fever, diarrhea, congestion and running ears.
Since she's had so much congestion, she hasn't been sleeping as well as usual. We don't have to get up with her at night, but she does wake up coughing and crying several times most nights. I try to wait it out for a few minutes before going to check on her and usually she stops within a couple of minutes and goes back to sleep. It makes for some long nights and some tired days. She's still not sleeping well at daycare - sometimes only 15-30 minutes during the day, but sometimes a good 2 hour nap if she's really tired.

One Month: