Anna – 9 months old

Anna has grown up a lot this month, physically and mentally. She has become much more attached to her mummy and daddy. She likes us to be around and protests if we leave her alone. When we are in baby classes, even though she is interested in fun activities and other babies, from time to time she still turns to look or touch me checking whether I’m there.

She is getting a bit shy with other people and doesn’t seem to remember anyone other than mummy and daddy yet. But when her granny and granddad visit, she is often very happy to be alone with them after a couple of hours of getting to know them again. She has also become a bit scared of noises coming out from electronic toys, but she is fine with the music CD.

Anna is very good at asking to be picked up. She leans her whole body forward, raises her hands to grasp my arms and makes some whiny noises. It is very sweet that she likes her daddy a lot. She smiles so happily when he comes home and she also asks him to pick her up when he walks around the house.

She loves being held. She is always happy if I carry her around. Sometimes she even asks me to walk around and protests if I stop or sit down. I find it interesting that she starts to learn when I put her down and cry even before I do it. For example, when I clear the high chair for her to sit down, she turns and holds on to me. When I point to the high chair and the food telling her ‘You need to sit down to eat’, she seems to understand it because she calms down and let me put her down.

She loves laughing. She laughs when she gets tickled. She laughs every time daddy plays peek-a-boo with her or when he juggles balls. She laughs when she throws balls away or when we throw balls to her. She laughs when I make funny faces or funny noises. Such a cheerful baby!

She is so good at playing now. She skilfully picks things up with one hand and then pass them to the other hand. She likes to check the front and back of objects, and wave them around. She is interested in everything, even a strand of hair, socks, mummy’s glasses, and especially mummy’s phone. One of her favourite activities is to turn the pages of any books that she can grab and try and eat them. I had to pull lots of paper out of her mouth as she managed to eat a quarter of the bookmark when I went to check on the food in the oven.

It is lovely to see her learn to give things away. When Simon gives Anna her favourite building block, she grabs it and then tries to give it back to him. She laughs so cheerfully when he grabs it. But she seems to be more attached to her book than the building block. She reaches out to give the book to Simon. But when Simon receives it, she cries out to get it back.

It is very fun to watch her play with her toy box. She pulls toys out of the box and throws them aside until she gets the toys that she wants, which are normally the colourful balls. She has a lot of pleasure from throwing things away actually. She loves throwing the balls or even just making the throwing action. Finally she knows how to play with the activity cubes, including opening and closing the windows, and turning the letter cubes around. She likes the beads on top of the activity cube and tries to grab them to pull herself up sometimes.

It is sweet that she sometimes jiggles when I turn on music or clap my hand and make some rhythmic sounds. She starts to reach for objects far away and get into the crawling position with two hands on the floor. But she is still a bit weak for it so she often falls flat on her tummy. She doesn’t have any sense of danger yet. She lunges forwards from anywhere if she sees anything interesting.

Eating solids has been a big change this month. She started to pick up things and put them into her mouth a couple of days after she turned 8 months. As she didn’t eat much at first, we still spoonfed her. But she has improved enormously over the month. She is so skilful now that she can even pick up half a small blueberry. She loves sweet fruit like strawberries, blueberries, pears, and melons. She doesn’t like banana. I gave her her first snack (i.e. apple rice cake) a few days ago and she loved it. Her milk intake seems to have gone down even though she still eats lots at night. She now knows where milk comes from. When she wants it, she buries her face on my chest.

She has two more teeth. The right upper front one came out at 8.5 months and the left one just a few days ago. She makes a lot of speech like sounds such as v, f, ch, tsk tsk. She has been saying ‘vaa-vaa’ a lot.

It has been an amazing month! Look forward to more to come!