9 Months

This months Sophia was perfecting her crawling and standing skills. Most of the time she would crawl to a nearby furniture and pull up to standing. By the end of the month she started making small steps along our couch, e.g. cruising. Now she can pull up on pretty much anything including almost a straight wall.

She has also started exploring our apartment and even managed to open couple of drawers in the kitchen.

Sophia babbles a lot, sometimes it sounds like a real language. Sometimes we almost hear correct words. For example we have heard her saying ‘cocuk’ which means “child” in Turkish when she was looking at children in the book.

She says “mama” usually when she is about to sleep and wants me to pick her up, sing and rock her to sleep. Right now I think “mama” means “mom, I’m about to sleep, pick me up, sing and rock me”. Recently we heard her saying “papa”, but probably random. In general she “talks” a lot.

Her favorite game is when we use google home. When she gets fussy and we need to change her to prevent her from turning to her belly we start saying “Ok, google, how does a cat sound like?” and google responds with a cat sound. Depending on how fussy she is we go through 4-10 different animals at the time. Recently we have noticed that when we say “ok google, how does the elephant sound like?” she immediately starting making an elephant noise similar to the one google makes (pure scream of aaaaaaa…). She has this reaction only on elephant, maybe because this is the easiest sound to mimic.

Sophia loves riding on subways and exploring the map of New York. She is usually the center of attention of the entire car.

The weather is getting chilly and this means wearing cute hats and fall outfits.

Sophia likes playing pica-boo. She even initiates this game and plays with us or Freddie. She either uses a blanket to cover and uncover her face or just hides her face by diving into bed or simply turning away.

Until recently Freddie was her favorite toy. She can drag him by his tail and he would let her do it without any resistance or defense.

Joanna is still going away when Sophia tries to approach her.

Recently Sophia got interested in books and pictures, especially after we bought age appropriate books with uncluttered graphics, Montessori style. Before she simply tried to eat the books. Now she looks at the pictures and even points at different images. She specifically gets excited when she sees the pictures of cats. Also Sophia spends more time manipulating toys like putting rings on the pyramid and playing with object permanence box.

Regarding food Sophia is still not a big eater. Even though she is interested in eating food more, she still gets only few bites at a time. She tries to transfer food from hand to hand and not always able to bring it to her mouth. She does not like when we feed her and prefers feeding herself most of the time unsuccessfully. She is very good at drinking water from a glass by herself. We are trying to give her the food we eat and she tried various foods like veggies, beans, lentils, apples, tofu, yogurt, strawberries.

At the Montessori class she was eating at a small table. We also ordered a small table and chair that should arrive next month. This way she will have more freedom and independence eating.

We have ordered a small tray, a baby size pitcher, a baby glass and utensils Montessori style. Will be posting more photos of this later.

This month her grandma Olia visited us for a short time. The time was too short but nice.

Sophia also is attending “Music with Pete” at Hootenanny and also goes to watch dance classes with Peniel and Ned.

And this month Sophia finished her second swimming session at Aquabeba, she enjoyed the last class a lot.