It’s only been a couple days since I posted my letter to Mackenzie for her 9 month birthday, but it seems like so much has been happening with her since then. It’s almost as if she started hearing that she’s 9 months old now and that means she needs to be taking on new challenges and hitting those milestones.

I mentioned that she was starting to pull herself up on edge the coffee table, but I walked into her room yesterday morning and Mackenzie was sitting up in her crib. That means she can now sit up while laying on her stomach. She’s also using the bars on her crib to help pull herself to her knees and to a standing position. Thank goodness I dropped the mattress part down to the lower level a couple weeks ago or she might have been working her way over the side of the crib already.

She’s getting incredibly strong and is finding ways around our road blocks very quickly. She used to detour around obstructions, but now she will just try to climb over us, the pillow, toy or whatever else is laying in her way. And she usually succeeds. It won’t be long until I have no time to keep up with anything anymore, not even her.

Mackenzie is also making attempts to feed herself. She’s been eating big soft pretzels, pieces of bread and similar items for a while by herself. We’ve recently added mini-rice cakes and kid’s cookies to the list. But she’s also working on feeding herself things like oatmeal and fruit puree (anything in the spoon really). Getting the initial bite into her mouth isn’t so bad (since I’ve already brought it most of the way there when she grabs hold of the spoon. The problem occurs with the stuff that’s left in the spoon. It is explored with the hands, which explore everything else and we all become a sticky mess. But it’s all part of the learning process and Ayla is certainly enjoying every morsel of food that ends up on the floor.

She’s also getting drinking down pretty well. We got these cool sippy cup lids for our Phillips Avent bottles (part of the Magic Cup line I think) and they are just brilliant. Mack can still learn to drink from a sippy cup but can’t flood the kitchen while the plastic stoppers are in place. Unfortunately, I sometimes take them off so she will get a better feel for what it will be like to drink from a real sippy cup and I forgot to check the bottle of fruit tea I gave her this morning. I turned around while making her breakfast and found her pouring all the tea on the step of her chair. At least the chair got a good cleaning this way which was long overdue. The only other part of the equation that she still needs to grasp is holding the cup higher so the water will continue to flow out of the bottle. Once she has that down, we’re golden.

She’s also starting to figure out that certain things can fit inside of each other and how to make that happen. Mack has a set of plastic cups that nest inside of each other (they do some other fun stuff too like stacking, making imprints in sand or patterns when filled with water) and she mastered the art of putting one inside the other on Friday. Boy was she excited! She even got to show her daddy when he got home from work which was also exciting. Two cups were the best combination though; we threw in a third one for her to use but the game just got crazy after that and not so much fun. But we were pretty amazed at her skills and can’t wait til she can start using blocks and all sorts of other stuff. So many big developments ahead!

Oh, and remember those size 6 month clothes I was talking about in my letter? Well forget the idea of them fitting anymore. The pink cherry outfit above is one of the last ones I got to put on her before nothing fit anymore at all. I put one shirt on her in the morning and when I took it off that evening, it was a struggle. Since I don’t want to end up cutting clothes off of her anytime soon, we’re moving on up to the 9 month size. Some 6-9 month stuff still works, and the 6-12 are fine, but anything with just a 6 on it goes into the big box of clothes we’ve outgrown. Looks like we’ll be adding more stuff to ebay very, very soon…so we can keep buying her more clothes that will only fit for a couple months. 🙂