9 months, looking back

Ginny is 9 months old, which means she's been out of my womb as long as she was in it.

Funny as it seems, I can't remember what I used to do with Ginny before she could crawl and play and laugh and explore, and otherwise make life much more fun and much more demanding.  I remember that when I propped her up in couch corners, she just sat there.  And when I lay her on blankets on the floor, she just lay there.  What else did we do?

I also remember certain days while I was on maternity leave in which Ginny and I snuggled in the La-Z-Boy for almost the entire day.  When she fell asleep in my arms, I would fall asleep too.  And when she was awake, I read books to her.  In those days I could show her books with real pages instead of cardboard, and she would just stare at them, instead of grabbing them and gleefully wreaking destruction on them.

And every one of her diapers was poopy, and because it was wet poo, every third diaper was a blow-out.  That's the nice thing about firmer stools.  They mostly stay put.

Nursing was the other thing we did, and I know it used to take a terribly long time and happen amazingly frequently.  She would fall asleep during it, and I would tug her arms, and flick her feet, and poke her head, to make her wake up and keep nursing; and each tug and flick and poke would be good for one swallow, so that nursing went something like this: Swallow ... asleep. "Ginny!" [tug]. Startle, swallow ... asleep. "Ginny!" [flick]. Startle, swallow ... asleep. "Ginny!" [poke].  And so on.  And so on.  For an hour.  And then an hour later we did it again.

She got swaddled every night and slept on her back.  She sleeps on her tummy now, and often when we check on her she'll have her little butt up in the air.

She had no kind of nap schedule whatever. She napped for as long or short as she wanted, at whatever time she wanted, as often as she wanted.  Two days in a row was the longest streak we could manage with keeping naps at the same time.  It wasn't until she started eating solids, and getting a regular feeding routine, that nap times began to be established ... you know, approximately.

I think it was pretty early on that she began to show a predilection for the sound of her own voice.  And I don't mean crying.  I mean cooing, squealing, shrieking, shouting, repeating syllables, and singing.  She's always happy to add her thoughts to the sermons at church, for instance.  And to lift up her voice during prayers.  She shouts at us at the dinner table, and hollers into plastic cups at play time, and talks during diaper changes, and my favorite - she'll sometimes babble sweetly upon waking up.

She had a nice amount of dark hair when she was born, which was replaced first by baldness, and then by dirty blonde hair. Right now it's still short and straight, but the longer it gets, the more I think it may possibly show a propensity to curl. Fingers crossed.

Her eyes are still blue.