Nine months!

This is a bit late, but… Tala turned nine months old in the Philippines. Yay! She’s now spent as much time in the great wide world as she did inside my womb.

As you can see, I’ve been having fun with her hair. This is my favorite hairdo: the baby Bjork.

Not easy to do, now that she’s become 100 times more active, more wriggly and stronger, but the resulting cuteness is so gratifying. Even if the hairdo needs multiple touch-ups during the day. Oh, what mothers will do.

I also love seeing her in double buns. Her hair is so long now, but I still don’t want to cut it. Sometimes I don’t even want to fix it anymore—seeing her in pigtails makes me think, Gosh, she looks like a little girl. Not a baby.

Keeping her hair all wild and messy brings her right back to babyhood, which is where I want her to be… FOREVER! Just kidding. Actually, no, I’m not.

After mastering the crawl, this month Tala learned to sit up on her own. She now goes back and forth between sitting and crawling with ease. There’s also been a lot more babbling and clinginess. I’m hoping that the former will continue, and that the latter is just a phase.

She’s gearing up for the next big event: standing. She spends lots of time pushing herself up on my tummy or Marlon’s chest, pulling herself to a kneeling position, and practicing the art of standing on her own two feet, using anything she can hold on to for support.

We started baby-led weaning (complementing milk with solid food, not weaning off the breast or bottle) in earnest at about six months, and in the past month it’s really taken off. There’s a lot more eating and a lot less playing. Our daily routine now includes having breakfast (in this picture it’s a tiny quail egg) and at least one other meal together, where Tala feeds herself. I just put pieces of soft cooked food in front of her and she knows what to do. It’s great!

While I love that Tala can feed herself, already knows how to handle and chew food, and really seems to enjoy it, I’m not being super militant about baby-led weaning. I do recognize that spoon-feeding gets the “job” (if you see meals as a job) done faster. Occasionally I’ll spoon-feed her if we’re rushed for time, or if our regular menu features something like a lentil soup or sweet potato mash.

This month marks some big travel moments for Tala: her first train ride (to Dusseldorf)…

and her first long-haul, transcontinental flight! More on that in a separate post. All you need to know for now is that we survived!