Kayleigh turned 9 months old and had her well-baby checkup last Thursday.

She no longer minds long car seat rides and can entertain herself rather well. It is a lot more fun to venture out of the house now that she doesn't scream as soon as she is buckled in the car seat. Unfortunately, she has completely outgrown the infant car seat and is ready to move up to a convertible. We will wait until Abby is able to be in a booster and then just have Kayleigh use Abby's current seats; there is no reason to buy new convertible seats when Abby is so close to being upgrading to a booster (age 4).

Kayleigh is also not as sensitive to the slightest wet diaper anymore, which helps car trips immensely as well.

She has said her first "ba-ba," her first "ma-ma," and to Abby's delight, her first "abba!" She waves when you tell her bye-bye. She chatters non-stop most of the time and loves to sing and have you hold her up to dance.

She can hold a crayon and draw with it, rather than putting it in her mouth immediately.

Kayleigh takes 2 30-minutes naps during the day and goes to bed promptly at 8:00 PM at night, getting up at 11 and 4-ish to feed before waking up around 7:00 AM. Her schedule is pretty much set and we've adjusted to it. However, we would like to wean her off of one night-time feeding and I talked to the pediatrician about it during her check-up. He suggests weaning her off her pacifiers because the last thing she recalls before falling asleep is sucking. If she comes up to a light sleep in the middle of the night and can't find her pacifier, she will become fully awake and will cry for us. Sounded reasonable. So, since that night, Kayleigh has not had her pacifier except for a few times to calm her down, but never to fall asleep with. We have not gotten a single complaint. She falls asleep just fine. She may stir at random times, but will chatter and fall right back to sleep. Yet, at 11 and 4-ish, she will inevitably cry for us, fully awake, demanding a feeding. So, I think she might actually just be hungry.

Abby and Kayleigh have started to play together, teasing each other, calling and responding to one another (Abby will squeal at Kayleigh and Kayleigh will match her sound and pitch exactly, then both girls will burst into laughter).

She is creeping along furniture, crawling her funny crawl everywhere and over everything. She can climb up stairs, but not down.


She certainly is more stubbornly focused on trouble than Abby ever was - going after power cords, lights, outlets, cat toys, cat food, cat water fountain, the cats!

After getting her two bottom teeth at 5 months, her upper two front teeth are finally making their appearances (1/15).

She dropped a bit in her height and weight percentages, but no one's worried. The doctor believes we might have caught her just before a growth spurt, so we have that to look forward to.

Only the Hep B shot was given, but she had her finger pricked for a blood test for anemia. We didn't even get a whimper for the shot, but the finger prick was unnecessarily deep and looked pretty painful. Plus, the Band-aid she received really frightened her.

Overall, she is doing great.