11 Months Old!

I know I know I know – I have been so terrible about updating Miss Montgomery’s blog! She turned 11 months old last week while we were at the Houston Rodeo. She started walking about a month ago – shortly after her 10-month birthday. She’s a walking expert now – carefully stepping over toys or obstacles. We’re not yet to running but she’s shuffling into a pretty fast walk. Running is not far behind!

She has almost five teeth now – three on the top and two on the bottom. We had to trim her bangs in the front because they were actually getting so long that they were getting in her eyes! Montgomery has learned a few words – she can show you where the light is on the ceiling and knows what shoes are (if you ask her about her shoes she looks at her feet – whether she has shoes on or not!). Of course she knows ba-ba for bottle and can be very demanding for her ba-ba!

She continues to be a very busy baby but in the last week or so she’s gotten to the stage where she’s not nearly as easy as she was at restaurants. She used to just sit in her high chair and watch everyone going by and just eat rice, but now she doesn’t want to stay in her high chair. She wants to walk around and talk to everyone in the restaurant and throws a fit if you make her stay in her high chair. We knew this was coming eventually but we were hoping to have a little more time before this! I guess it just means that we will be eating more family dinners at home now!

She’s eating a lot more “real” food now. The mushy baby food just doesn’t seem to interest her very much (except for sweet potatoes). She’ll eat peas, carrots, beans, bread, rice, pasta – all the basics. She had her first Thin Mint Girl Scout cookie this week and of course it ended up smeared all over her (see photos below).

10 Months Old!

Montgomery turned 10 months old on Sunday!!! Wow – it goes by so quickly!!!! We went for a check up with Dr. Cook and she weighs 19 pounds and is 28 inches long, which is 40 percentile and 50 percentile respectively. Her head is still at 97 percentile! She doesn’t look like she has a melon head to me but apparently it’s pretty big in comparison to her peers. More room for brains I guess.

Birdie continues to be pretty easy and just so much fun and so entertaining. She constantly chatters away, making all sorts of sounds, squeals and random noises. I wish I knew what she was saying, but all in good time - I am sure she will be giving us an earful of what she thinks. I can spend hours just watching her examine every little thing she comes across - picking it up, turning it over, holding it in her fingers to determine its texture, weight, smell and of course, taste. She is fascinated by mouths – she wants to stick her hand in your mouth and feel around. If you open your mouth and make strange noises or clicks she will reach in to see where the sound is coming from and giggle. She is a very busy child and doesn’t seem to get bored at all. She can still keep herself entertained with a roll of toilet paper for a good 30 minutes.

She’s definitely aware of what “no” means and I only have to tell her “no” once or twice and give her a stern look and she pretty much obeys. There are only two things that we constantly have to tell her NO about and yet she still pushes us to see what her boundaries are – her diaper pail and the computer keyboard. We tell her NO when she touches these two things and she stops, then looks at me as it if to gauge how serious I am about the NO. Then she will slowly reach out to the diaper pail while looking at me and smiling – as if to taunt me “I am going to touch this”!!!! Little devil! I tell her NO again sternly and she will pull her hand back quickly and look at me and smile. If she tries a third time to touch it, I say NO and pick her up and set her back down a few feet away from it – at his point her lower lip comes out and her whole face goes into what I call “frowny face” and she starts with a big cry. It’s a forced cry though, not that cry that comes out when she falls down or is scared. It’s pretty comical and doesn’t last very long.

She also loves standing at the back door and watching Scott as he rides horses in the round pen. Last week he saw her standing in the doorway watching him and he waved at her and she waved back!!! It was too cute. I can hold her up on the back of the sofa so she can watch him through the window and she will bang on the window and shout at him through the glass, as if she’s trying to get Scott’s attention by saying “Hey I’m over here DaDa!”

Over the weekend, Scott was out of town at a horse show and I had the phone on speaker so he could talk to her. At the end I said to her, “Say bye-bye DaDa” and she said “bye-bye DaDa”. Scott heard her say it! She can almost say “Hi Tanky” too. (Tank is one of our dogs.)

One of her top front teeth has been working its way in slowly over the last few weeks. It’s poked out about half way so she has a 3-tooth smile, which is adorable. She’s eating lots of “real” food too – Cheerios, goldfish crackers, animal crackers, rice, pasta and various fruits. Anything that dissolves or that she can somewhat smash with her three teeth and gums seems fair game at this point.

She’s on the verge of walking – she was taking three or four steps here and there and sitting down, but now she is taking around 8 – 10 steps now before she sits down. And she just gets so proud of herself too – it’s the cutest thing. I can’t believe we’ll be celebrating her 1st birthday in just two months!


We met "Clutch" - the Houston Rocket's mascot - at the Arboretum! She loved him!

So tired she fell asleep in her high chair!

Toilet Paper is Fun!

I don’t have too much to update on Montgomery but wanted to post something to keep the ball rolling on this blog. She was supposed to go in for her 9-month wellness appointment this month but her doctor was booked up until the 1st week of February! So I guess it will be her 10-month wellness appointment. She continues to take a few steps here and there but not yet walking consistently. She’s also a really good sleeper – amen! Many nights we put her in her crib and she doesn’t even cry – she just looks at her “special pillow”, hugs it, puts her arms around it and puts her head down and goes to sleep!

She did discover toiler paper for the first time last week, which was very entertaining. She pulled off individual sheets one at a time, smiled, giggled, shook it in the air, dropped it and repeated this over and over for about 30 minutes. Of course it was filled with her usual squeals of delight – she was so pleased with herself for discovering this wonderful new toy. She’s getting pretty good at waving good-bye and she somewhat mumbles “bye bye”. She knows she’s supposed to shake her arm when someone leaves, which is really cute.

Birdie got to play in the dirt for the first time as well. She didn’t like it at first – she made her “frowny face” and pulled her hands away from it. But then she got used to it and started to dig around in it – and of course proceeded to put a handful of dirt in her mouth. Needless to say she spit it out as much as she could but she still had a ring of dirt around her mouth.



We also put her bouncy swing on the horse walker to make her very own merry-go-round (no horses on the walker of course!). She thought that was great fun!



Scott and Birdie and I came in from dinner last week and he went up to her room to put her to bed. After about 30 minutes he was still up there, so I went up to see what was going on and they were both sound asleep on the bed in her room! It was so cute I just had to take some photos – especially since they were posed in the same position. They have so many similarities it’s uncanny. They have similar facial expressions and habits, even down to liking to rub their faces on their pillows! Jeez, I wonder if there is any of me in there, other than having my long, alien toes!


Here are some additional photos – enjoy!

Sleeping Through the Night!!!

I have totally slacked off on updating Montgomery’s blog!!! December is always a crazy month for us – trying to juggle the NCHA Futurity, the holidays, etc. Let me see where we left off and I can give everyone a good update!

To start, Montgomery turns 9-months-old today! She is still very petite for her age, with a small frame and from what I can tell on the scale, weighing in around 18 ½ pounds. We go to Dr. Cook this month for a wellness check up so I will know more after that. She is really starting to balance well on her own and has even taken a step or two here or there, but no definite moves toward actual consistent walking.

She continues to be VERY vocal – constantly chattering away in her own baby language. I can make out a few words here and there that she is trying to mimic from us. She says mamamamamamamamam a lot but that doesn’t really mean MaMa – it means “pick me up”!!! She says it to everyone. We’ve mastered “uh-oh” – she says that all the time for everything!

We had a fun first Christmas. Scott and I only got her two small toys because we figured she is still too young to really understand the concept of gifts. She had a good time opening the gifts she got, although she was more interested in the wrapping paper, the tags, and the Christmas tree ornaments than the gifts themselves! Next year will be more interactive.

I think the biggest milestone we’ve hit is sleeping through the night – yea!!!!!! We were having her sleep in the bed with us and she was still waking up twice a night screaming for a bottle, so we just kept her in the bed so we could pop a bottle in her mouth and go back to sleep. Of course I loved having her there to snuggle with too, but Scott wasn’t quite so keen on it! We got to the point where we were both ready for her to start sleeping in her crib in her room. Of course being the overanalyzer that I am, I read up on a few different methods to accomplish this and the one I connected with best was by a Dr. Ferber, who says you basically put them in their crib at the same time every night – without a bottle or rocking them to sleep – and you can stay by their crib to reassure them for about 60 seconds and then you have to leave the room. The child will predictably scream and cry and you have to wait 10 minutes before you can go in again and just let them know you are still there (not allowed to pick them up or rock them – just let them know they haven’t been abandoned). Then you leave again and they scream and cry and you have to wait 30 minutes before you can go back in, etc. You repeat this process every night until they eventually learn to self-soothe themselves to sleep.

Scott and I prepared for the worst – assuming she would cry for probably an hour or so and this would be a long and tedious process. We put her in her crib at 8pm and she cried and we left the room. She cried for about 10 minutes and I went back in and let her know we were still there and left the room (we could watch her on the monitor the whole time). She cried for about 3 more minutes and just stopped. She looked around the room and around her crib, found her pillow she likes to cuddle up with and she put her head on it and went to sleep! Wow – were we amazed that we got off so easy! She woke up once that night at around 2am and cried for about 2 minutes and went back to sleep on her own. The 2nd night we repeated the process and she cried for about 5 minutes and then put her head on her pillow and went to sleep. She slept through the night until 7am! Hallalujah!!!! Sleep at last!!! Some nights she doesn’t even cry at all when we put her in bed – she just puts her head on her “special pillow” and looks at us as we leave the room and she goes to sleep!

I swear, other than the difficult first 5 months when she had horrible reflux, she has been such a wonderful, easy, happy, loving baby. How did we get soooo lucky???

Here are some photos!

Bronchitis

It’s been almost a month since I updated The Birdie Diaries! A lot has happened in a month. Montgomery got a cough that escalated into bronchitis. We had a scary trip to the doctor when her breathing got very labored and fast. We had to sit in the doctor’s office for several hours doing breathing treatments to get it back to normal and we had to continue to breathing treatments at home. Needless to say, a 7-month-old does NOT take kindly to having a mask strapped to her face so that the vapors from the nebulizer medicine would get sucked into her lungs. It took two of us to do each treatment since she fights and screams the whole time. She’s all well now and back to her happy smiling self!

She’s definitely inquisitive and determined. When she sees something she hasn’t seen before she investigates it immediately. She doesn’t seem to have much fear. She jumps a little at the sound of the hair dryer or the vacuum cleaner, but that’s about it. She’s still in love with all our dogs and she’s definitely a Daddy’s girl. She recognizes the sound of Scott's spurs walking up the porch steps before he comes in the house and she always turns and squeals in anticipation of him coming in the door. She still chaters endlessly but she's not saying any actual words yet but she does know ba-ba for bottle!

We’re still working on putting her in her crib to sleep at night. We’re getting better about it. We put her down at night in her crib and that usually lasts until about 1 or 2am and then I bring her down to the bed. I know I’m creating my own monster in this bad habit but we’re working on it!

Here are some photos!

Crawling Now!

It’s been too long since I posted a new blog entry! Scott and I went to Italy – he was asked to put on a cutting horse clinic there. It was ton of fun – we spent a week in the Milan area and got to spend two days in Venice as well. Montgomery stayed with her grandparents and she was remarkably well-behaved! It was so hard to leave her – we missed her soooooo much, but we knew she was in good hands and we got daily reports on her activities. I’ll admit it was nice to sleep though an entire night!!!

The latest milestones include another tooth and she’s now officially crawling! She doesn’t do a traditional crawl on her knees though – she does a “crab” crawl where she tucks her little feet up under her and leans on one knee and pushes off her feet. She’s very quick now! She can scoot across the room very well. When she stops, she carefully pulls her feet up under her and rolls back on her butt so she’s sitting up. She’s very proud of herself when she finds something to pull herself up to so she’s on her feet. We’ve started babyproofing that house as much as possible. We’re trying to contain her mostly to the living room kitchen area, and hopefully as soon as we get some baby fencing done, she can spend more time in her room.

She’s already outgrown lots of toys – her baby swing, her bouncy seat, her cradle, etc. I spent an hour on Sunday lowering the mattress in her crib to the bottom level so that when she naps and wakes up in there, she won’t pull herself up and fall over the edge! Scott and I are still letting her sleep in the bed at night. I’m well aware that we are creating a monster by getting into that habit – but considering that she slept in her playpen/crib when she spent a week with her grandparents, I don’t think SHE is the one who cares where she sleeps. It’s all ME!! I just love having her curled up next to me at night and since she’s still taking a bottle in the middle of the night, it’s a convenience thing too. I know one of these days I am going to have to go cold turkey and put her in her crib at night and not get up when she cries for a bottle – but I am dreading it!!!!

Here are some photos. I will try to get a video of the crab crawl!

Our First Tooth!

We’ve had a few more milestones! Montgomery has her first tooth! After many weeks of excessive drooling and intense teething that would put a new puppy to shame, we finally have a tooth making an appearance on the bottom front of her mouth. If you stick your finger in there to feel it, she chomps down on your finger and makes an adorable angry-looking chewing face. Right now, the tooth is so small that it doesn’t hurt when she bites you, but soon I am sure it wont feel so “cute”!

Montgomery is also “dangerously” close to crawling. She can now get her body up on her hands and knees, and she can even press up on her hands and feet (no knees) but from there she’s not quite sure what to do. She rocks back and forth, and sometimes puts her head on the ground to brace herself, as if her head is a 5th appendage. If she were in yoga class it might be considered a pretty good “downward dog”. Yesterday I watched her as she managed to get up on her hands and knees and then sit there for a bit while she contemplated her next move. She then managed to pull her knees up under her. From there, she leaned over to her left and put her weight mostly on her left leg and her knee – somewhat sitting on that leg. She extended her right leg and gave a good solid push and she propelled herself forward about two inches! Hallelujah! We’re crawling! The whole process took about five minutes and she was completely exhausted, so she gave up after that. We’ll try again tomorrow. She can also push herself in reverse with her arms, which means we can’t leave her on the bed surrounded by pillows anymore! She can push enough to push the pillows off the bed.

On Saturday we went to the Houston Arboretum Halloween festival, which was lots of fun. We walked around for a little bit and checked out all the cool events. I will post photos from that soon. On Sunday morning we went to the grocery store and she sat in the front of the cart for the first time (as opposed to being in her car seat placed on top of the front of the cart). The grocery store is apparently filled with many exciting sights and sounds if you are six months old!!