Life Tossed Together: Nine Months Old

Actually, he's nearly nine and a half months old, but we just had our nine month well baby checkup today, so I've been holding off on the update.

The most exciting part about the past month has been the explosion of mobility progress! He's gone from tentatively crawling a few steps to full on speed laps up and down our hallway. He can crawl up and down ramps, climb up and down a single step, and has mastered pulling himself to standing and getting back down to a seated position. He's even starting to cruise along the furniture a bit and will sometimes let us "walk" him across the room holding our hands. It's crazy how quickly it's all happened.

He eats a ton of purees now that he's getting more exercise -- maybe 16 oz. daily spread over three meals, plus he's still nursing every 3-4 hours. He eats everything! But he seems to especially love applesauce and sweet potatoes. I'm hoping to start integrating more table foods this month, although I love purees because it's so quick and easy to feed him rather than waiting for Mr Pokey to feed himself a quarter of an avocado for 30 minutes.

He's talking a bit more, I get "ma-ma-ma"-ed all day long, and he's getting other consonant sounds down too. It doesn't seem to have any meaning to him yet, but I still enjoy hearing it. I think he's understanding some of the sign language we do also. He seems to sign "All Done" and "Milk," although he seems to use "milk" for all food, not just nursing. I'm trying to teach "more" and "eat" right now. I don't take it too seriously but I like the idea of his being able to communicate with me a little earlier.

He started to feed me Cheerios this month, which is ridiculously cute. He's got a great little sense of humor and we giggle and goof around a lot during the day. He's still pretty clingy with me. We've been trying to leave him in nursery care at church, and I usually get "paged" to come back at least once during the service, little stinker. He loves being held and carried around. When Brandon and I are standing near each other and one of us is holding him, he'll reach out for the other parent every ten seconds so we're constantly passing him back and forth. It's cute but rather annoying when we're trying to have a conversation!

His favorite games right now are pushing our soccer ball around the floor, crawling and investigating everything, being tickled, and putting his feet into my mouth while he is nursing. Seriously. It cracks him up.

His nine-month stats:

Head Circumference: 18.5" (83rd percentile)
Weight: 24 lbs 0.5 oz (97th percentile)
Height: 30 inches (94th percentile)

I predicted that he'd fall back onto the charts this time, and I was right! What a scrawny little guy. He's practically a normal sized baby now.

Here are some photos from the past month!