9 Month Hailey

1. Hailey is 9 months! 

2. She weighs 18.8 pounds and is in the 59th percentile. 

3. She's 27 inches and in the 50th percentile. Her head grew the most this last time. It jumped in size a bit. She's in the 55th percentile, but the doctor said it was a very good sign that she's eating and sleeping really well and she's smart! :) 

4. Hailey is crawling very proficiently at 9 months and has been crawling pretty well for the last few weeks. She's pulling herself up to furniture and cruising everywhere. And she's even started climbing the stairs. We've tried to teach her how to climb backwards down the stairs and after one fall from about five steps up she's a little more wary about coming down. She's started fussing at least to warn us that she's stuck and needs help down. We have to keep a constant eye on her though cuz she enjoys exploring and getting into anything she sees that seems interesting. The doctor said this was very impressive for her age to already be crawling so well! :)

5. She likes solid food. Similar to our other kids, she's not a huge fan of baby food. Not sure if it's a texture thing or some other reason, but I've tried the squeezable pouches, and I've tried different spoons and different flavors but she'll turn her head and turn it down. She does like to try most everything if it's off of our plates and solid. Another reason we have to have a constant eye on Hailey is she'll pick up everything and anything off the floor and put it in her mouth. The other day she looked like she was at it again and I came to clear her hand of whatever she had found and I discovered she'd been trying to eat a bug. I'm pretty sure it was already dead, but still... yuck. ;P

6. Her sleeping habits are getting somewhat better. We did some sleep training a while back and set up a nice bedtime routine. I'll read her a book, say a prayer and sing songs to her while nursing her. Then, we'll turn off lights and I set her down in the playpen awake and she'll usually fall right to sleep. She'll wake up occasionally now and I'll go comfort her lay her back down and then she'll cry for a few minutes before going back to sleep. If I'm already in bed though, then she comes to bed with us. She's still having to nurse herself back to sleep which will be hard to break that habit and I'm dreading doing it. She's started to cuddle up more to daddy occasionally in bed though, which is nice for me. :P Naps are very off and on good. I usually get one good nap out of her during the day I guess. Other naps tend to happen after nursing her, she'll fall asleep in my arms and after trying to lay her down she wakes right up and screams until I get her back out. 

7. Hailey is still a mama's girl. She definitely has some stranger anxiety. Our RS President came by to drop something off and even though I was holding Hailey, when she smiled at Hailey, Hailey burst into tears. The same thing happened when Scott's brother was visiting. New people definitely make her nervous. She's gotten so much better with daddy though and her other brothers and sister. If she's not tired or hungry she plays happily without me and I'm able to get a little alone time. But she likes to be held by me and she's even shown some jealousy when Caleb tries to get in some time on my lap. 

8. She's talking or "babbling" a lot more. One thing we've noticed is when she's happy she says sounds like dadadada a lot more and when she's sad or frustrated she says mamamama. Just a funny observation. :)

9. Hailey has a cute little tongue that she loves to stick out and move around like she's licking her bottom lip and ready to eat something tasty. :P She has also perfected a fake cough. I'm not sure why she does it or what initiates it and I assume it's fake because it tends to be pretty random and fake sounding. I know once she did it right after spitting up a little in her mouth. She swallowed the spit up back down and gave me this look like "I don't know what that was but *cough *cough". And she also has a cute wave. She waves goodnight and goodbye to family and others when we're leaving or going to bed. :) 

10. As she's getting more mobile she's getting more interested in the other kids play. She follows them when she can and will break towers and run over games if she's close. Claire is getting more and more confident in picking her up and moving her when she needs to or trying to keep her away from things like the stairs and inside her room. Or she'll pick Hailey up out of her bed and bring her to me after she's woken from a nap. Seth still likes to get in her face and plays with her all the time sometimes a little too roughly, but she tolerates it pretty well. Caleb is getting better and better. He's constantly telling me now that he loves her and that she's "his baby". He still wants his moments and will let us know that he wants daddy to take her or I need to put Hailey down so he can sit on my lap, but he's interacting more with her too and wants to share things with her like his otter pops. :) We love our baby girl. :)

July 4th

Celebrating Independence Day usually brings parades, balloon festivals, family gatherings, picnics and fireworks. With Covid this year, a lot of our usual "go to" activities weren't happening but we made do with what we could and we had a really good time. :)

The day before we got together with Scott's brothers and their families and had a little barbecue and fun with them. Then, on the 4th we put together our own little picnic. Scott set up the table outside in the little shade we could find on the side of the house along with an umbrella to give us a little privacy. :P It didn't seem like much, but kids thought it was a blast and want to do it again already. :)

We then had a few hours to kill waiting for it to get dark for fireworks. The city was going to shoot off fireworks at three different locations (extra high so that people wouldn't have to leave their homes). We were located right in the middle. So while we waited, we watched a movie, played with chalk, rode bikes, shot hoops, took pictures (a lot, haha) and just had fun outside. 

Caleb fell asleep during the movie but joined us a little later. He was happy and well rested and ready to stay up later than normal. :P

As it started getting dark, more of our family came outside to join us. My parents came out for a bit and the kids' cousins came out to do sparklers. Neighbors around us started doing their own fireworks and with all the fun going on around us, we had a good time. We weren't able to see the city fireworks, there were too many trees and houses blocking our view, but they weren't missed. We had some good ones going off all around us and the kids were running around the house playing games with cousins and weren't even watching the fireworks. It was a good time. We were reminded how awesome our country is and how grateful we are to live in America. :) 

#CCC_Orange

I really liked how this month turned out. The red/orange rock and sand in St. George really helped provide many orange photos for me. The sunset photo I had to take with my phone cuz I didn't have my DSLR with me at the time, but it was just beautiful. :) I didn't have a shortage of photos at the end of the month like I originally thought I would. :) 

Amber's Birthday

I had a lovely birthday. :) Claire and Everett both made decorations and cards for me. Scott made breakfast for me. We had church upstairs and I got to see many of my sisters on a family chat that afternoon. They all sang to me from a far, that was fun. :) I played games and Scott made a wonderful dinner and an even cooler ice cream cake! He's getting good at those. :) It was great! 

Scott's Birthday

For Scott's birthday this year, we went and got donuts at Krispy Kreme (they were doing one free donut for everyone everyday that week). We took them to the splash pad and enjoyed the morning eating donuts and playing in the water (except for Caleb, who refused to play in the water and just wanted to play on the playground). Afterwards, we came home for a lunch/work/quiet time. I made a space force cake for Scott since he's on the Space Force team for UTFL. Then, we got pizza and celebrated Scott's birthday more with cake and ice-cream. Claire made a poster for him that describes him so well. :) 

#CCC_Purple

I do not have a lot of purple around my house, so this month was a little harder to come up with enough photos for my grid and I used a few from the same photo ops. My plum photo got featured on the color chase challenge Instagram feed so that was pretty cool. :) We have so many plums from the kids school lunches (we've been picking up free lunches from the school since the virus started) so I knew I needed to try and photograph them for purple. I tried once and didn't like how any of my images turned out so after some Pinterest searches on how to photograph fruit, I tried again and I liked my results so much better!

Yellow Phase Bryson Party

After being in a red phase since mid March, our state announced that we could enter an orange phase at the beginning of the month of May and then we moved to yellow phase mid May. This meant we could be in groups of about 50. Scott's brother Kyle invited us up to Ogden to his home for a family get together and for a much needed break from social distancing. :) We enjoyed a day of playing games including backgammon and ladder ball. We had hamburgers and hot dogs chips and special drinks (orange slushies). Kids ran around playing and jumping rope and riding bikes and were thrilled to be among their cousins. And then we ended the day with cotton candy! The older Bryson cousins brought their cotton candy machine from their job and showed us their fun skills of creating cotton candy animals. It was so much fun and it was good medicine for us all. :)

 

Caleb's first time trying cotton candy. He wasn't sure how to eat it at first and tried licking it. So funny. :P