This is what 9 months looks like.

This is what 9 months looks like.

The past 3 weeks have been crazy for you baby gurl. The development has been fast and furious and has left us all reeling. First, you crawled. With 24 hours you had learnt to pull yourself up and cruise along any surface you could hold on to. I forgot how challenging it is when your compact, relatively stationary baby suddenly finds her legs can take her places. The other day I looked over to see you standing, unaided in the middle of the room. It was hilarious and scary and amazing. My baby is growing.

Your independence thrills and scares you at once. You long to explore on your own, but you want me to hold you. You really want these two things to happen simultaneously, and hate that they can't. But you're getting there. If I am very close by, you are buoyed with confidence. You have this little go getter attitude that I adore - a quiet resilience and strength that I can already see.

Sometimes though you cry when I walk away. Your brother never did that and having a baby that is attached to me like this is both soothing (in an odd maternal way) yet surprising.

I’m so conscious of that sentence there, ‘Your brother never did that’. It’s hard to not compare the only two babies I’ve ever been responsible for, and so I keep reminding myself; you are your own person. He never cried for me the way you do. You are so quick to getting around, he was lazy by comparison. He was an excellent sleeper, you, err, not so much.

Ah, sleeping. Or not sleeping, which is more accurate. Times have been hard, Arla Bo. All these exciting things and not so exciting growing pains have made you long for the comfort of us, day and night. We have a strict ‘no bed sharing’ policy around here but lately that has gone out the window, along with our sleep and some of our sanity. You're mostly sleeping through the night pattern has changed to mostly not sleeping through the night. Some nights are harder than others. Sometimes you scream at the unjustness of it all. Sometimes you are so excited at being in-between your two favourite people that you think 3am is party time. You particularly love to use these wee hours to climb up Daddy and stroke his beard with your pudgy little hands.

Every part of you is pudgy actually. There is a layer of fat that envelopes you and it is delicious. We can’t help but squeeze and prod and stroke and nibble you. 

You have just started to hang out of your pram like a puppy dog. No longer content to look at the person pushing you, you want to see the world! Now! You want to know everything! You’re fascinated by it all, eager to know what’s happening.

Your brother is possibly your most favourite person. We can’t work it out. The adoration you have for each other is so amusing, I don't think we were prepared for you to both love each other in the way you do. He is so caring towards you (in-between the calling you poobum), anticipating your needs and always wanting to comfort you. In return, you think he is hilarious and nearly always laugh at his jokes/performances/crazy stunts. It's win win.

His nicknames for you: put put, mama-mapoos, ma, lovely little baby, 

Our nicknames for you: Puppychops, pups, puppers, chunk, Bo, bobo, bobes, bin, binwaah, bin bin, binny, binky, binks.

You are the sweetest, sleep depriving tyrant I've met.