9 Months old – Your own personal comedy act

Babies this age love to laugh and are easily amused. They are also aware of their ability to make you laugh, and once you have found an activity funny, they will repeat it over and over. Lots of silly activities like animal noises, false coughs, funny faces and cute actions will become firm parts of the repertoire! Baby will be easily encouraged to trot out these actions for doting friends and family. Baby will also be able to charm you by identifying you as mama or dada. Nothing melts the heart in quite the same way! Baby may even have another word or two up the sleeve. It’s just so much fun having a baby this age around.

Who is that?

The baby who smiled at everyone and was happy to cuddle anyone who was willing is becoming a thing of the past. This baby is now becoming suspicious of strangers, and may become unwilling to be held by anyone other than the select few. Introducing a baby sitter or new carer will become a bit more tricky. For this reason, if baby is still willing to go to strangers, consider letting baby become familiar with a baby sitter or two, to ease things later.

Easily frustrated

Baby is exploring the world as fast as he can, and can be quite driven to learn and discover. The downside of this is that baby can get easily frustrated. Remember that frustration is one of the things that drives baby to learn to crawl, walk and talk. It’s a necessary part of development. So don’t be too tempted to reduce baby’s levels of frustration by using things like baby walkers. Short periods of supervised time in these types of gadgets can really help a baby who is overwhelmed with frustration. And they are fun. However, baby needs the physical development that comes with the stages of crawling and walking, and you should restrain yourself from interfering too quickly.

Food

Baby is learning and observing the way you behave, so this is a good time to start improving your diet to give baby a good example. Filling the house with healthy foods is a good habit to get into for the whole family, and the desire to do the best for baby can be a great incentive to clean up your own act! The food that you dish up for baby should be simple and nutritious. Try to stay away from sugar, salt and highly processed foods. Baby really doesn’t need much seasoning, and it is important for baby to get the taste of plain foods first. By letting your baby experience what simple foods taste like, you are setting the trend for life and doing baby a great favour.