9 Months! New Developments

Kayley turns 9 months old today! 

In the last month she has fine-tuned skills and acquired some new ones.

Kayley now crawls without reservation. She’s all over the place and can be super fast when she sees something she wants (like the cat) or wants to get somewhere (like to mama or dada’s legs, or on top of the cat). She also likes to crawl while holding things in one or both of her hands.

Crawling with a ball in hand. It's tricky, but she has figured it out

She waves hi to lots of people. People who come to visit, people at church, strangers at restaurants, animals she sees on walks, etc. We’re still working on bye, but she does it sometimes.

Kayley has had her own way of clapping for the last couple months. She holds her hands together and then makes them go up and down in her lap. Took us a while to realize it’s how she claps. Sometimes she claps the “normal” way with her hands almost all the way open.

She likes to climb! I think she misses the stairs at my mom’s place. We don’t have any stairs, but we’ve been using boxes to block her from going into certain parts of our apartment. If she wants to she climbs right up on top of them. She just doesn’t know how to get down gracefully yet. 

Boxes only slow her down, the don't stop her anymore

Sometimes she bounces up and down when music plays. It’s fun to see her dance.

Kayley is starting to share (aka hand people toys). You can sit with her for a few minutes now passing a single toy back and forth many times. If you don’t take the toy she is trying to hand you she drops it on the ground. Sometimes she picks it back up, other times she waits for you to pick it up.

Playing with her ball that she was passing back and forth with her dada

She is starting to choose to go out of sight to play for short periods of time. Don’t worry it’s all in a baby safe environment, and I keep an eye on her. I want to encourage her self-play and teach her that I do not have to be right next to her all the time, so I’m thus happy and proud (and yet a little sad) that she has started to do this.

She’s getting down her pincher motion. Last week we started a new snack time routine. Instead of me feeding her the whole time with a spoon, I feed her a little, and then I give her pieces of food to pick up and eat herself. She’s getting quite good at it and seems to really enjoy the time. 

Using her little fingers to feed herself bananas and a mumu cracker

There are more areas she has developed in, but these are the skills she shows the most and is really getting down. I love watching her learn and develop every day. One of the many blessings from God of being a stay at home mom. ^_^