Zayda: 9 months!

Nine months!

And she's busy, busy, busy.

She's still not crawling, but is grabbing, scooting, and stretching to get pretty much whatever she wants. She'll occasionally get up on all fours, but can somehow get whatever she wants within about a three-foot area. I swear she can stretch to twice her length when she bends over to grab something.

Her new favorite thing is pointing; she points at everything!

I guess it makes sense that she doesn't need to move if she can just direct someone else to move her wherever she wants to go or get them to bring her whatever she wants.  The pointing comes in handy.




The stranger danger continues... She's also still wary of new people--or sometimes even people who aren't new but who aren't Mom. She gets nervous if I try to hand her off to anyone and isn't real content with very many people if I'm not around with her. (But I'm almost always with her so she still happy and friendly nearly all the time.)

She also loves her siblings. She seems to prefer the chaos to calm. She gets restless if she's the only one home but loves to be in the middle of whatever the bigger kids are doing.

She is still fond of her pacifier. I've never had a kid who really had a pacifier. (Other than Lex who decided he really liked them at about age three and began stealing them from daycare kids I was watching and hoarding them.) So, I expect this will be a little annoying when I have to take it away from her in a few months. I told the kids to stop giving them to her when they just seem them sitting around & when she could care less. (Azia has been good at remembering/ enforcing this--she routinely pops it out of Zayda's mouth & her, "You don't need this!") But, I still like them for nap time. They're sort of like magic. I give it to her and she just turns over and goes to sleep.

Her other favorites are repeating things and hoodie strings. She loves to grab, play with, and chew on any strings she finds attached to sweatshirts. They've been her favorite to grab and play with since she figured out her hands a few months ago.

The repeating is new (& right now it's just clapping and sounds and simple things she can do) but I expect she'll just keep following the other kids' lead.