Third Person: 9 Months

Boo Boo has now been out as long as he was in, and our little man is growing more precocious by the day. He is just so dang close to crawling, it literally could be any second now. He will launch himself forward, can turn in any direction he chooses, and handily wedge himself underneath of stuff by moving backwards (and subsequently get MAD). He loves to reach for toys, the remote, cell phones, and anything that goes, but that crawling motion is just barely out of reach. Against my better judgement I'm trying to find that one thing that motivates him enough to launch forward. Fortunately we have quite a selection of annoying and noisy toys to keep in the rotation. Until then we continue to hold on tight as he tries to send himself sailing over couches, chairs, and whatever other obstacle is in his way. In fact just this morning he went forehead-first into one of GG's chairs which litter the house. Took her three and a half years to get a goose egg. Took him 9 months. Bruiser, comin' through! And I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Luke has a habit of circling his hands and feet when he's excited. It's usually at the table, and those little wrists and ankles go into overdrive just spinning away. It's the funniest little habit I've ever seen and it makes me nervous to think what he's going to do with that energy once he gets moving.

Until we conquer the crawling motion, Luke has chosen to concentrate on building his core with Pilates planks.

feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel the burn!

Eating has become soooooo much easier in the last couple months - what a relief. Luke is chowing down three squares a day and nursing/bottle 3-4 times/day. Favorites are grapes, watermelon, cheese, crackers, cereal, noodles, ham & cheese sandwiches, pb&j, waffles, apples...the list goes on, as does my time in the kitchen chopping all that stuff up into wee pieces. But he's got a belly to fill and is great at feeding himself. I will occasionally go in with yogurt or some leftover baby food but mostly he'd prefer to do it himself thankyouverymuch.

who could notice the purple hand-me-down bib when there are waffles to shovel in?

The extra calories don't seem to have much effect on his weight, but they are definitely sending him up to the rafters. The lad came in at just 19 pounds 2 oz but 29.5" at today's 9 month check up. That's the 30th and 90th percentiles. 9.5" inches in 9 months? Crazy. We also have two new teeth, bringing our total toofer count up to 6. Did you know you can grind your top and bottom two teeth? You can. Gah! He is not a happy camper when teething. I took my first ever 2 a.m. car trip a couple weeks ago trying to get the poor man to fall back asleep. Fail. Not until the next night when we were well into the beloved Tylenol/ibuprofen rotation did the fussing subside. Naturally that was the week Matt was out of town for work so a good time was had by all. We're also experiencing some separation anxiety when dropping off at day care or even if I just leave the room (Mom! No! Don't leave me to go pee! Don't do it! I need you!) but that comes with the territory. Mostly Luke is a calm, low maintenance little dude who loves to hang out with his fam.

Aside from the mobility, Lukas is now a lot more interactive. He can play peek-a-boo with a burp rag, tell us he's 'so big', and wave. He's also started to 'share' which is just so dang cute.

sissie, behold the egg

first, i try it

then, i offer it to you

then we klunk

With all this busyness, getting his pictures this month was no easy feat (plus I'm still a little slow with using the 'ol iPhone). So here are the best of the bunch!