We visited Mike's family in mid-October. I had a business trip to Kansas City so it worked out for Maude and I to fly down there and Mike and Stella to drive. The only time we've had Maude in the car for longer than a half hour or so was a three hour trip that didn't go so well. She's definitely not a long distance traveler so I was super thankful we were able to fly.
Maude met her Uncle John, Aunt Amy, and Cousin Noelle for the first time. Noelle is four and was wonderful with Maude. She occasionally thought Maude should be able to do more things like knock over a tower of blocks on command or understand something like not to knock over the tower of blocks in progress, but it was fun to see them together and know that the will grow up looking forward to seeing each other and be able to play together more and more as the years progress. When Maude would come and play, Noelle would immediately put away all the small toys so that "Baby Maude won't eat them." I'm not sure if she was concerned for Maude's safety or concerned over the thought that her toys might be eaten!! Either way, I appreciated her diligence.
The day after we returned from KC, it was my birthday. We had a group of friends over for dinner - it was perfect! If you had told me 5 years ago that my perfect birthday was having friends over, with their kids, to have dinner at home and to play some board games, I would have told you that's impossible. It really was a great night. The main dish was made by Mike's dad. He made up some extra barbecue ribs and sent them back with us. They were ridiculously good and everyone went on and on about them! Dessert was butterscotch budino (pudding) with a layer of caramel, topped with sea salt and freshly whipped cream. All of our special occasions in LA had butterscotch budino that we'd by from Pizzeria Mozza, a popular restaurant. Mike surprised me by whipping some up all by himself for my birthday! YUM!!
I think I mentioned in the last update that Maude's two top teeth came in with very little fanfare and I had high hopes that future teeth would follow suit. She now has one more bottom tooth and is working on it's match and we've been quite aware of it. There are days when she bites down wrong on the spoon as she's eating and we certainly know about it! She's also had some general fussiness as well as more drooling which results in more action in her diapers which in turn results in some diaper rash. Poor thing. I had sort of hoped she was going out of order in the tooth sprouting process and was working on some molars or something. Nope, just some little bottom teeth.
Eating solids has really taken off for Maude! She is loving food and gobbles up nearly everything we put in front of her. I'm not sure if she just wasn't all that interested in food until about 8 months or if it took her a month or two of trying it before she figured it all out. With her increased enthusiasm for food and her increased appetite, we've been pretty liberal with what we're feeding her which may have backfired. On top of the diaper rash from teething, she's had a rash for the past week that just won't go away and I finally came to the conclusion today that it's an eczema rash. I'm fairly certain it's due to a food she's sensitive to. Our guess is that it's related to grains of some sort so we're cutting them out for the next few days. Assuming it clears up, we'll add grains back in one by one and see if one is an obvious culprit. I'm hoping that all of her food issues work themselves out over time. I think it's pretty common to have some sensitivities to foods at this age and I'm thankful the worst of it has been rashes and of course the avocado barfing incident...
What's Maude's favorite thing to do you ask? CLAP!! She loves loves loves to clap! She started out clapping and would clap to mimic us. Now all we have to do is say "Yay" (and it doesn't even have to be in a very excited tone) and she'll start wildly clapping! Anytime we are excited is another excuse for her to clap. And when she gets food in her mouth all on her own, she's pretty darn proud and claps for herself. We love it. This probably helps to make her clap even more!
Other developments she's working on mastering are pulling herself up and waving. She frequently pulls herself up on me or Mike, but has only done it independently on furniture or other objects a few times. The first time she pulled herself up to standing without using one of us, I shrieked like a mad woman because I was so excited! I freaked her out a little bit so it was a while before she tried that again... Maude also clearly waved goodnight to Mike last week. She's done really small waves before where we weren't certain that was what she was doing, but this wave was for real. For some reason, it's now developed into some weird version of a wave where she takes all of her fingers and traps her thumb under them and then pops her thumb out and covers her fingers with it. She does that over and over again.
On top of all of that, our gal is a constant babbler. She said "momma" for the first time on Halloween. I know she doesn't know what it means but after hearing "dadda" for months, I was thrilled to hear her utter "mommamommama." She's adding new sounds everyday and sometimes we swear we hear her actually utter real words. She must think she's really saying something sometimes the way she goes on and on.
Our little pumpkin dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween. She was pretty darn adorable if you ask me. We went trick or treating to some neighbors and checked out "Halloween Street" nearby. The whole block is shut down to traffic and they go all out decorating their houses. Mike and I enjoyed seeing all the gawdy spooky decorations. Maude could have cared less unless it was really lighted up, but we had fun checking it all out. We even had a decent number of kids stop by our house once we got home. Mike did a great job decorating our place so I think it attracted a few more kids than we would have otherwise.
I think that covers it. Oh, except for the pictures! And a video. The video shows off Maude's eating, some teeth, and of course the clapping!
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| Tuckered out after a walk with Daddy and Stella. I love the cockeyed hat! And note the pajamas. Socks are not stood for in Maude's opinion so it's easier to leave footed pajamas on her when we need her to stay warm. |
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| This was the first independent pull up. We didn't get a shot of the standing because it lasted for a brief moment before my shrieking freaked the poor girl out. |
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| Cousins! Maude was enthralled with what we call Noelle's "movie star hair." |
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| Our house all decked out for Halloween. |
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| Maude and Henry. He was Charlie Brown and she was the Great Pumpkin! |
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| Can't you just see this as the picture on a Halloween greeting card?! |
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| 9 months old!! Can you believe it? She's now been on the outside as long as she was on the inside. Woah. |
