9 Months

Every time I put Spud to bed, I swear I can just see her growing longer and longer by the minute right before my very nose.

As of the last weighing-in a few days ago, Spud weighs a decent 7.8 kg and measures 71cm. She stands at an average 50% percentile for weight, and a high 75% top percentile for height. If her height’s not as stunted as me, she is going to be one hell of a tall girl. I certainly hope she inherits that tall Dutch gene (amongst other things), as it is no fun being a katek* like me.

At 9 months, Spud has begun to master the art of blabbering. She yaks loads these days with a good dose of Ta-ta-ta-ta-tas, La-la-la-la-las, Mama (don’t know if she actually knows it), Pappa (don’t think she actually knows it!), a smattering of complains (can’t describe it in words, but you know she’s complaining when you hear it) and giving me big bubbles of “Phbtttfttttt” (the act of blowing bubbles with her mouth, resulting in a shower of saliva, if not food); like the kid in this video.

My eyebrows have also recently become her target --- I reckon she is finding them absolutely fascinating for her to try to pull them out with her pincer fingers. All I have to do is give her a big silly grin and shudder “in pain” when she does that, and that was all it takes for her to break out into her glorious squeals.

She also seems to understand some commands: Like, when I hold my hand out to her and ask her if she would give her toy to me, she will place whatever she is holding onto my palm! Same goes for when I tell her to come to me (she’ll crawl to me).

Spud has also begun terrorizing the cats as she spends hours and hours going after them whenever she sees them. We suspect, somehow she might think that she is a cat; judging by the way she goes on all fours and when she gets close to Fudge (not Andy or Donut as they both bolt out the moment they see Spud coming their way) or us for that matter, she will then say “ahhh” in a soft voice and then rub her head to Fudge’s or our faces.

Silver Bullet even caught her in the act as she starts out on one of the cats’ scratch posts and got seriously excited with the bell inside the hanging ball…

It is high time to separate cats’ and Spud’s toy.

(While writing the above sentence, I imagine other parents who are already paranoid of cats with babies cringing and looking absolutely petrified; thinking what kind of parents we are! Not only do we have THREE cats who live together under one roof, we also allow Spud to play with the cats' toys! (No we don't, but we realise that there will be occasions where Spud will just play with it as she does not know any better). How absurd and what kind of parents are we?! To that I'll say, oh well!

On a different note, Spud has certainly has calmed down a lot more as compared to her first few months of life. She smiles and laughs a lot more these days; and when not too cranky, she is a lot of fun to be with. [What are the chances I’m jinxing this by writing this all out?]

She is certainly more confident in pulling herself up using one hand and already started to cruise along with the furniture. She is definitely vocal, and, given her very talkative genes (guess from which side?), I won’t be surprise if she’s going to be talking our ears off sooner than later. Perhaps in a few possible languages too!

As she is exposed to not only English, but a few other languages on a daily basis as well, it will be interesting to see the languages and accents she will be picking up! Just imagine: She hears my smattering, half-baked Malay and sometimes Singlish, Silver Bullet’s sometimes forgotten Dutch on a revival mode, the Nanny’s heavily accented English in a Filipino accent, as well as the occasional Thai from well, Thais around this country and within our apartment building…

Gosh. This is going to be a making of one confused kid.




*Katek means shorty in Malay