9 months!

Last week Macy turned 9 months old and has turned a few corners!  She has made quite a few advances developmentally in the past month and has such a fun little personality! 

Her stats from the doctor's appointment last week:
Weight- 18.7 lbs (a drop down to the 50th percentile, but her doctor says this is normal for breastfed babies, plus she is so much more active now!)
Length- 28 inches

Clothing size: She fits comfortably into most 9-month clothes.  I'm having a lot of fun searching for cute summer clothes and accessories for our vacations this summer!  The goal with accessories now is to find hats and sunglasses that she won't pull off her head.  It pains me to say this, but I hardly ever put bows in her hair anymore.  Even with my attempts at distraction, she still manages to find them and pull them out.

Diet:  Macy is still nursing a few times a day, but the frequency has decreased in the past month or so.  She gets 3 meals a day of pureed food and baby cereal, and snacks in between.  At her 9-month appointment the pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to give her any table food that we can smoosh between our fingers.  So, the past week has included lots of new and exciting foods for Macy.  She is unsure about the textures of some foods, but is a great sport at trying almost anything. 
It has been a bit of a challenge to get Macy to transition to baby food with "texture".  She seems to think the chunks don't belong, gags, and attempts to pull the pieces out of her mouth (see video).

Sleeping:  We finally cut Macy off from the 4am feed.  After about 8 1/2 months we thought she should be able to make it through the night.  I was beginning to suspect that the wake-up was more a desire for attention than nutrition.  She has been doing well now sleeping from about 7pm-7am.  We suspect she still gets up here and there, but we are trying to help her figure out how to put herself back to sleep without our assistance.  Macy now has a consistent nap schedule including two naps a day of approximately 1-2 hours each.

Development:  This has been the best part!  Macy has started crawling in the past week.  It is more of an inchworm technique, but she gets where she wants to go.  The transition to crawling took a bit of time.  We could tell that Macy really wanted to move, but she would dive forward from a sitting position and get stuck on her belly.  She could get on all fours and rock, but that was it.  Slowly she figured out that she could sneak forward a bit by getting her knees under her and pulling her upper body forward.  Still, she lacked motivation sometimes.  I then decided that she needed a distracting challenge to get her moving.  So, I built towers out of blocks and boy, did she go after those (see video)! 

Macy is also efficiently feeding herself and has developed the index finger & thumb "pincher" grasp.  She pulls herself up from sitting to standing.  She also claps on command!  For several days she would answer us with the "ffff" of "woof" when asked what a dog says, but she seems to have forgotten that talent.  Macy has also cut a few new teeth in the past few weeks.  She now has 3 teeth on top and 2 on bottom.

Bryce and I are also thrilled with the most recent development: Macy conquered her fear of flying.  We have tried several times to toss her (just little tosses, people) in the air and she would always ball up her fists and look scared.  Just this week we tried again and she laughed and smiled (see video)! 

Bryce and I agree that this is the best age yet.  We are enjoying her so much and feel lucky to have such a happy girl.