Ada at 9 months.

Just a quick one, since we did a pretty long update just a month ago.

What's been happening recently:

Ada is now over 20 pounds!

Ada has a new tooth - her third. This one is her upper incisor, the one in the middle but on the right. She suffered a little bit, but not too much.

Ada is now starting to "cruise" along furniture a little bit. She will also sort of take a few steps behind the new walker we got for her, though we do have to hold onto it too, or else it will roll out from under her pretty quickly.

She also now crawls up the stairs by herself each evening before bedtime (and sometimes before naps, too). She particularly likes it if we have a toy waiting for her at the top for her to aim for.

Ada continues to eat well, eating most things the nursery gives her, and most things I make for her. She seems to have a really good appetite. She now wiggles a bit in excitement particularly if she sees that there is one of her favorite things coming her way (like the fromage frais pots I found that don't have sugar, or her morning weetabix with yogurt). She can now drink out of a straw, though not ones with the valves (the no spill kind) yet.

Ada is making noises that are starting to sound a little bit more like words, but she doesn't babble or jabber the way some babies do.

As mentioned before, we had our first parents' evening at Charlton. They had an educational consultant person talk for a bit about early years education (main points: don't push kids to write too early, read to them and tell stories as much as possible, play is learning, etc.), they fed us lasagne (it was fine), and then I (Mark was at home with Ada) got to see her room and talk to her key worker (Ada's "lead" carer).

Since Ada has only been there a month, and we usually talk to them for a bit when we pick her up each day, there wasn't too much extra to talk about. But I did find out more about how they plan activities for each week and that Ada's key worker (Jo) will organize activities specifically for what Ada is working on at the moment. Since all Ada seems to want to do is stand, she has a lot of "table" based activities, so Ada can stand around and do things. Jo also said that she thought that Ada was getting close to standing on her own. We also learned that we need to get Ada a rain suit and shoes (!) so they can take her outside when it's rainy as well as dry.