Daniel: 9 months

3/4 of a year has passed since our precious happy Daniel came in to our lives. It gets harder to remember what it was like before our family became four. I enjoy watching Daniel personality blossom. How he interacts with his big brother is both heart warming and provides many learning and growing opportunities for us as a family. We had his baby dedication at church last weekend. Since you're reading this and have some level of attachment to our family, I ask you to please pray for us.  Growing is always a challenge. It's much easier to do what's fun, easy and selfish. It requires less of a reliance on God for us to go with the flow of the culture around us.

Sleep:
Daniel is sleeping about 10 to 11 hours at night from about 8:30/ 9 pm to 7:30 am He has arrived at 2 long naps averaging 1 and a half to 2 hours each. He takes his first nap when he's been awake for two hours and he'll sleep about 45 minutes. His afternoon nap is 3 hours from when he woke up from his morning nap and lasts about 2 hours. Usually the first one starts about 9:30 or 10 and the second one starts at 2:30 pm.  Nap time is this little part of the day that's just me and Matthew and when we do our schooling. When big brother takes his one nap, Daniel and I get our alone time.

Clothes:
His pants are 6-9 months and his shirts and onesies are 12 months. Shoe size is 4. Size 3 diapers. We had 9 month visit this morning. Weight is 18.4 pounds which is in the 30th percentile and his height is 30 inches which is in the 90th percentile. His head circumference is 17 1/2 inches.

 

Food:
He eats four times a day.
Meal one- cut up fruit , cereal and nursing
Meal two- one stage 2 veggie and one stage 2 fruit, finger foods and then nursing
Meal three- stage 3 veggie with no chunks, finger foods and nursing
Meal four- nursing and bed time
His finger foo selections are cut off soft fruit, baby mum mums, gluten free puffs, wagon wheels and gerber crunchies

 

Socially:
So happy and giggly.  Really laid back and curious. He's into the stereo and ficus plants, just like big brother did at this stage. It's sweet to see the similarity of what attracts little ones. He giggles at anything: when Billy sings Father Abraham song, Daniel is just beside himself laughing, us crawling after him, turning our head fast towards him, anything big brother does - well except taking and pushing. He does very well in baby bible class and Fridays while I've been in Ladies Bible Study. He's a toucher and very outgoing.

 

Developmentally:

He started clapping on his own
Big boy crawls anywhere he wants to go.
Tries to mimic our facial expression, sticking tongue out, etc...
Everything goes in the mouth
We are working on baby sign language and I'm keeping with it this time. I know he'll start doing it back when he's ready.
Word recognition wise, when I say hungry ( as in asking him if he is), he stops crying. He's done this a few times.
He smiles and sits still for any finger play song game like patty cake, twinkle little star, abc's, Jesus Love Me, Wise Man, Father Abraham, Lord's Army, pretty much any song sung to him.
Babbles when he wants our attention and will get louder until we respond to him.

 

Almost a year of joy with this precious little guy.  Here's a couple of family pictures taken in the last month:

Picture at our church for the baby dedication slide show

hiking as a family last weekend