Our Growing Girls – Violet at 9 months

It’s been awhile since I took the time to make notes about our growing girls. Each of them is doing something particularly adorable lately, so I have to get it written down before I forget! First up is the darling baby . . .

Sweet little Violet Frances is growing up fast. She is a super fast crawler (since she’s been doing it for about 3 months now!) and pulls up on everything. She can stand there for a long while playing with things or looking at something. Sometimes she gets herself down and sometimes she gets stuck and cries for someone to help her sit back down. So far she isn’t cruising along the furniture or taking steps if you hold her hands, but I expect that won’t take long as she is very comfortable on her feet. We suspect that she is so much more active than her sisters were at the same age because she is so much smaller. In fact, we took Violet in for her 9-month well check and found out she was only in the 8th percentile for weight (15 lbs. 9 oz.) and 15th percentile for height (26.25 inches). We knew she was a peanut, but I was a little surprised that she was so tiny compared to other babies her age.  At first I thought she was especially small compared to her sisters at the same age, however, after looking up the numbers, while Molly was over 20 lbs at the same age; Livy was just 16 lbs. 11 oz. (which put her in the 25th% percentile) and interestingly enough, I was almost identical to Livy at 16 lbs. 15 oz. at 9 months! So while Violet is still the smallest of the four of us, she isn’t that far behind Livy or myself. We agreed with the doctor that her small size is something to watch, but not something to freak out about. It’s perfectly possible that Violet got the ‘Hatt genes’ and will be petite like Great Grandma Hatt. Her cousin Addison (my sister’s daughter) seems to be in the same boat. That being said, we are making a conscious effort to fill her up at mealtimes and let me tell you, I had no idea how much of a chow hound she is! I think I probably didn’t pay as much attention to how much solid/table food she was eating as I should have before her checkup (which is why they have such checkups, I suppose) and now that we know that she could stand to bulk up a bit, we happily let her partake in whatever we are eating (minus citrus, peanut butter, berries & honey which are not okay for a child under 1 yr) and have abandoned baby food altogether. She has been eating mashed potatoes, mild enchiladas, little bits of chicken & meat, pasta, cheese, banana bread & she really enjoyed her brownie the other night after dinner with friends! So hopefully, all of that will add up to a little more chunkiness at her next weigh-in in six weeks. She is also learning how to drink from a sippy cup and has two little teeth on the bottom that give her a really sweet smile.

Violet makes the cutest little squeaks & squawks. I don’t hear many consonants, but she is definitely a talker – mostly squeals & yayayaya. She doesn’t sleep through the night yet (in fact she usually wakes at least twice), but given that she is such a pleasant, easy-going baby (which for the record, all three of them have been), we figure we don’t have much to complain about! She loves taking a bath with her big sisters and when things start to get a little too wild, she is the first to be washed up & whisked away to safety! JR has taken on the decorating in her room and has a beautiful plan that is nearing completion. We’ve been calling it Violet’s treehouse and it will feature a life-sized wooden tree on the wall to compliment her bird bedding and robin’s egg blue walls. It’s really quite darling and makes us want to spruce up the big girls’ room so that theirs is equally as charming (I never got much beyond painting the walls & hanging curtains – which was done before Olivia was born!). So far, the nicknames that have stuck are Violeta, peanut, Vi, baby & piglet. We also call her fuzzy quite a bit because after a bath it is quite descriptive. Truth be told, Violet is a really sweet, happy baby and we are so blessed to have her!