Development progress at 9 months

This month has been a busy month for Tristan. He crawls and stands up now. His new found skills made it hard for him to fall asleep on his own during nap time. That was certainly stressful for all of us. It's still a bit of an issue now. Sleep is like a roller coaster. There are days where he would just fall asleep within 3-5 minutes and then there are days where he would cat nap.

Now that he can move, he is always on the move. He opens doors if they are left crack open. He can turn pages on books. He loves to rip paper. He hates it when we tried to contain him in the exersaucer or jumperoo or play pen. He will only stay in those for maybe 5 minutes and then he will start fussing. It annoys the hell out of Jean-Louis because he has to watch him constantly. He's like "why don't you just sit still for a change?" If I were a baby, I would be crawling and touching everything too. He is curious and he finally has the ability to explore the world.

We find ourselves using the word and baby sign "NO" a lot these days. We're trying to teach Tristan what is off limits but I read it is bad to use "NO" all the time because babies will not take it seriously. "NO" should be reserved for just the extreme cases. Ah, there are just too many rules. We probably shouldn't yell either but we are beginning to do that too. It's hard not to do these things because it comes natural to us in these circumstances. On a related note, Jean-Louis is starting to swear more and I always tell him not to and that he should get in the habit of avoiding it now. We don't want Tristan's first word to be a "bad" word!

I'm still breastfeeding 3 times a day and Tristan eats 3 times a day. We have introduced finger foods like bread, cheese, and bananas to him and he is getting very good at eating on his own. We no longer introduce new foods for 3 days at a time, unless it is something we believe he may be allergic to. If we already introduced something in the squash family, all other new squashes are probably okay so we don't bother with the 3 day rule. Neither of us have allergies to foods and we eat everything so chances are Tristan should be okay too. Tristan only drinks water and breastmilk. During his meals, we like to cover all the food groups. We try not to feed him too much bread or things which have all sorts of added flavor. Basically, we are trying to make his diet as healthy as possible. We're also feeding him more chunky food so that he learns to eat that instead of relying on us to puree all his food. He has 2 bottom teeth now so maybe he can use them when he eats :)

Tristan can't speak yet. He can't even say "dada" or "mama." He grunts a lot, squeals, and laughs with his mouth open and head arched backwards :) Jean-Louis thinks that Tristan might have signed the word "milk" last night but it is hard to say. It is similar to the action of grabbing food on his tray so maybe he was just trying to do that. Again, hard to say. I'm looking forward to the day he says "mama" :) I was actually worried that he grunted too much but apparently, the grunting is normal.

Finally, I should mention that Tristan cries when most strangers hold him. At least with the people he is not familiar with. We went to Victoria this week and he cried whenever my mom or dad held him. He was still doing it a bit when we left too. He did get a chance to bond with them a little. My mom can finally make Tristan smile so that was nice to see. It was a relief really because she was working very hard at entertaining and then boom! A smile :)