I thought I would write a short post about Max now that he has reached 9 months. For me, 9 months, or 40 ish weeks is a special milestone as it marks my baby being outside for as long as he was inside.
I don’t know if it’s something about being a second child but Max is a quietly determined little boy. He never seems to show any signs of achieving his next milestone, he will just suddenly do it. He went from being permanently horizontal to sitting almost perfectly at six months to the day. Exactly two months after that, he suddenly started crawling, after not really showing any sign of being fussed about it. Within a week, he’s mastered it perfectly and boy was he FAST!
He constantly takes us by surprise. We aren’t always prepared for what he is going to do next – like when he suddenly started climbing the stairs. He’s always a step ahead of us. We try hard not to compare him to Seth but it’s difficult when Seth would often spend weeks attempting to master a skill which gave us plenty of time to prepare.
He took to solids super fast. I’m still breastfeeding (a freakin miracle for many reasons) and he has gone from having huge cluster feeding sessions all day and night to having short, regular feeds that I’ve ‘offered’ rather than he has ‘demanded’ from me. So he’s clearly eating plenty!
Favourite foods so far are bananas (I need to film his excited banana face because it is extremely cute), sweet potato, chilli, persimmon and broccoli (yes really). He’s starting to get the hang of his pincer grip so I’ve started offering smaller foods like blueberries to help him explore his fine motor skills.
His favourite things to do at the moment are hold whatever he is eating up above his head like a trophy and to bang his spoon really loudly against his high chair tray.
There’s not much to say about Max’s sleep. He doesn’t sleep through and I can’t see that changing any time soon. A few months ago I was fed up of the sleep deprivation but he’s a little more settled now and just wakes once or twice. I have decided that, rather than try and change Max, instead I would change my expectations. Max wants to feed at 3am so I get half an hour of uninterrupted cuddles with him. Yes, a six hour stretch of sleep would be delicious but it ain’t happening so get over it, mum.
It’s been particularly interesting to see the sibling relationship develop between Max and Seth over the last month or so. They idolise each other and always have a smile for each other but we are seeing a little more rivalry between them now Max is fully mobile. When he was sitting, Seth enjoyed selecting toys that Max might like and taking them to him but now Max can take them for himself, Seth is a bit less obliging. There’s a lot of ‘no no NOOOO!’ from Seth when Max makes his move and then much frustrated crying from Max when Seth blocks him. There are days when I want to tear my hair out (an insert ear plugs) but I try and see it as an opportunity to teach them about boundaries and sharing. I might share a few things I’ve tried in another post but whilst it’s definitely a challenging time for us, progress is being made and ultimately, they still adore each other which is so lovely to see.
Feeding Sunshine 