Three-Fourths of a Year

Yesterday, Emma turned 9 months old.

My sweet baby girl has been out in the world almost as long as she was in my tummy. Crazy, crazy, crazy.


So, how are things going?

• Vitals: 16lb, 15oz (20th percentile); 26 3/4" long (26th percentile)

• Nighttime Sleep: We FINALLY dropped the middle of the night feeding. We now, once in a while, get a night with no waking up. Usually daddy still has to get up around 3:00am to soothe Emma back to sleep. She's usually in bed by 6 or 6:15pm and up around 6:30am or 7am

• Nap: Emma is still not a great napper. In total, she probably gets close to 3 hours of naps a day, divided among 2 naps. Today, it was 2 - 1.5 hour naps. I admit to being very jealous reading about all of you with good napping children out there!
  

• Eating: We are down to only three nursing sessions a day - first thing in the morning, after the first nap, and then before bed. We also do three meals of solids a day. She will pretty much eat anything. Today she ate some of my linguine from Noodles and even a few bites of chicken. Favorite food is probably peach Greek yogurt. We are trying to do more table food and less baby food, but that means mommy actually cooking (boo!).

• Developmental: Crawling, crawling, crawling. She's so quick. And pulling up on everything. Still no teeth. And pretty much just grunting. Still waiting for the first "ma ma" or "da da." Perhaps she's waiting to give it to us as a Christmas present?

I think that covers the basics. Here's one more picture that I love of Emma riding on Daddy's shoulders. She raises her hand in the air and looks like a cowgirl on a bucking bronco!

Shame. On. Me

It's been entirely too long since I sat down long enough to focus on a blog post. I still take time to read other people's posts, but that hasn't translated into a new post for me. I'm sure my absence hasn't ruined anyone's day yet, but, since I view this blog as a scrapbook of sorts, I'd like to avoid gaping holes.

So, here's what's been going on.

Baby is crawling like a mad woman. I turn my head for a second and she's halfway across the room. She loves outlets and our computer modem (it sits on the ground), which is a problem. She also loves to pull herself up. Imagine my surprise the first time I looked at her on the video monitor and found her standing up staring right back at me. And then watching her reach out and knock the video camera over!

On the (in)fertility front, hubby and I had a sit-down with our RE this week to chat about what the process will be if we want to try for another baby. We do have ONE embryo frozen so we'd do a FET. And, since I have regular periods, we'd do it as a "natural cycle" which would entail just one shot. Sounds good to me! And the RE assures me that they only freeze very high quality embryos that have a good chance of implanting. Obviously no guarantees, but still good to know.

The RE wants me to do it as soon as possible - once I'm done breastfeeding - because he is fearful that, if it doesn't work, I'll be that much older in attempting full-blown IVF (which I'm not convinced we want to do again regardless). He says that Emma is a "miracle baby" given my ovarian situation. I think we know full well she's a miracle!

I'm thinking maybe next summer at the earliest. We'll see. And even though we'll have moved out of the area by then, it will only entail one trip back up here for the embryo transfer. Everything else will be done remotely (bloodwork, monitoring, etc).

We did change our insurance to another provider offered by hubby's work because we almost exhausted the $15,000 lifetime cap with Aetna. Now we'll let Anthem have some fun. Thankfully they have a separate $15,000 cap. Hopefully they won't require me to do a bunch of the same crud again before they let me move onto the actual procedure.

So, that's probably enough for now. I'll end with one little photo. This is what we used for our Christmas card. I just love it!