9 months

Seth - you are 9 months old!

Stats
Height:
Weight:
Head circumference:
Teeth: 4 (two on bottom, two on top). Your top two teeth came in within one week of each other starting Labor Day weekend.

You wear some 6-9 months clothes and mostly 6-12 months clothes. You wear size 4 shoes mostly....when you wear them! You are very interested in your shoes, especially when they have cute little lion faces on them.

You mastered the army crawl three weeks ago and started knee-crawling up at the cabin. Now, you'll knee-crawl about 8 steps and then drop to your tummy to army-crawl. You're beginning to realize that knee-crawl gets you faster to your destinations.

And destinations do you have to go to! Wherever I am, you crawl to me. Where your daddy is, you crawl to him. If you see me go into my room, I here you huffing and puffing to get to where I am. And you move quick!

You like to crawl under the piano and if me or your Daddy is in the foyer, you crawl under the piano to peer at us through the chair rails by the stairs. When Jason or I get home from work, you hear the garage door open and know it's one of us, so you come crawling to the gate at the top of the stairs to watch us come through the garage door. It's so cute!

You also like cords way too much, so when I hear you crawling fast like you're on a mission, I know it's because you've found a cord. Teaching you not to chew on the cords is our first test of discipline that we have with you.

On your 9-month birthday, you accomplished another first - pulling yourself up from a crawl to a kneeling position! Two days later, you decided to pull yourself up from a kneeling position to a standing position. You can stand by yourself by holding onto your musical table, sofa or anything that is the perfect height for you to hold onto.

Your favorite foods are: pureed carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, sweet potatoes, strawberries, pears, apples and bananas. You LOVE your morning breakfast oatmeal with apples. You exclaim, "MMMM!!!" with every bite. You occasionally have Cheerio and Puff snacks, but we're still trying to help you get the experience of finger foods. I think you'd rather just have Mommy and Daddy feed you!

Nursing is still going strong. For the last 4 weeks, you would rather just get the nursing done and over with so you can be on the floor and play with your stuffed animals. I really have to focus you by getting rid of all the distractions - low light, door shut, fan on so it drowns out background noise.

You are always making some noise. Whether it's happy screamings, motor boat lips, blowing raspberries, "Hmmm!"ing. You babble "mama" and "baba" alot, but you only seem to do that when you're sitting. When you're exploring, you'd rather stick everything in your mouth instead of babble.

You play a laughing game with us. First, you laugh. Then we laugh. Then you laugh. Then we laugh. This goes on back and forth for a few minutes. We just laugh and laugh! I hope that's what our home will always be like as you grow up - love and laughter.

Right now it's seems as if you found your tongue. You keep running it over your four teeth and stick it out over your lips.

You consistently take 2 naps - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Rarely do you take a catnap around dinner time. You still go to sleep at 7pm and sleep until 7am, but two times this week you have woken up screaming. We haven't figured out why, but I've read about these "wonder weeks" in which babies have big developmental leaps and things can just get a little off. So, I'm hoping that's what it was! But, I do have to admit I loved cuddling you back to sleep when you did wake up late at night.:)

This has been such a fun month so far. You are growing so fast and exploring everything. I'm so happy at your happiness when you see something new and exciting. Your daddy and mommy love you so much!