9 Months of Clayton

Clayton is 9 months old! So hard to believe!  I've really slacked in my duties of recording his month-by-month progress, so I'll attempt to make up for it here.

-Clayton isn't crawling yet, but he's moving.  He goes from sitting up to forward on his hands and knees to reach things or to move around a bit, and then back to sitting.  Mostly he scoots & turns while sitting up, but it works for him.  He doesn't go all over the place, but will move a few feet as he's playing.

-He loves baby cereal, especially the Beechnut breakfast banana oatmeal stuff.  He's kind of hit & miss on eating baby food from a jar, but prefers green vegetables to anything else.  He loves finger food though- puffs, cheerios, soft peas & other vegetables, fruit, leaves--anything he can pick up and put in his mouth by himself.

-We've made some great progress on sleeping.  He was doing well, and then with all our traveling and moving our schedules were totally thrown off and both Jackson and Clayton had to re-adjust.  I'm happy to report that he's doing great now...he usually sleeps through the night without waking up, about 7 pm to 6:00-7:30 am.  Sometimes he does wake but usually goes back to sleep on his own.

-He naps twice a day, around 9 am and 12:30 pm.  Naps are getting longer recently, which is great.  He was doing the dreadful 20-30 minute nap thing, but now he'll usually have one 1 1/2 hour nap a day, and the other may be shorter.  When it is the afternoon nap that is shorter things get kind of rough around 4pm, but we manage.

-He LOVES his big brother.  They are interacting more these days and it is fun (usually).  Jackson's new favorite thing do to with Clayton is to push him around the house in the laundry basket.  Clayton loves it.  There's also a budding sibling rivalry going on too though... Clayton has decided that he doesn't like it when Jackson takes toys from him, and Jackson doesn't appreciate that Clayton can move around enough to take the cars that he is playing with.  So it begins.

-I'm afraid he has a milk allergy or lactose intolerance.  About two or three months ago he started actually drinking formula (he'd totally refuse it before) and would down several ounces, but then would throw it all back up again soon after that.  A few weeks ago when I was at my parent's house he got Jackson's milk sippy cup after dinner and drank a little, and then was up for hours that night screaming like he was in pain.  And last week we gave him some cheese baby puff things and he loved them and ate a bunch, and then when I went in to check on him before I went to bed, he'd thrown up all over in his crib.  ...so I don't really know what to make of it all...I guess I'll mention it to the doctor when we go for our check-up and avoid milk until then.  Anyone with experience on this??
-Clayton likes books.  He likes to look at them by himself and he likes to listen to me read to him.

-He loves the bath and gets excited when we go in the bathroom and I start undressing him.  He loves the rubber ducky and likes splashing in the water.  Usually Jackson & Clayton are in the bath together.
-He has two teeth, the bottom middle ones.

-He's starting to pull himself up to his knees
-He loves to put things in and out of containers, and often does it with the Mr. Potato Head parts, Mickey & Friends, and cars.


-(Clayton, don't read this part when you grow up and can read...or at least wait until you have kids of your own so you'll understand) ...I feel like Clayton definitely doesn't get the attention that Jackson did (does?)...I guess that goes with being the second child.  Hey, I'm the second and I survived.  But really most of my time is filled with playing with Jackson while Clayton tags along.  He's there, he's not neglected.  And he's being entertained by watching.  But it's definitely not the same as it was when I only had the baby to take care of all day long.  I do make an effort to play with and interact with Clayton one-on-one (beyond the feeding, diaper changing, etc) but it really takes a conscious effort.  That's kinda sad.
-He's generally a happy little person and loves attention from other people.

-While he's still a momma's boy, no doubt, he's doing a lot better at being ok with going to other people.

-His hair definitely has a lot of red in it these days.  It was reddish when he was born, but then he lost that hair and the new hair was just blond, then round three of hair looks quite red most of the time.
-He loves sippy cups.

-Clayton likes to click his tongue and likes us to copy him doing it.
-He likes music and will sing and dance along sometimes.
-He's in size 3 diapers and size 9 month clothes.

-We'll get the official weight & other stats when we have his dr check-up in a few weeks, but from our scale at home I think he is about 18.5 lbs.

-We like him a lot.