9 months old!

It is hard to believe that another month has gone by. This whole experience of parenthood has been a whirlwind. Just the other day, I had to buy new pajamas for the boy and realized that 12 month PJs were in a whole new section of Babies R Us. They barely had any with footies in that section! I almost cried.

Our lamb is growing up. He barely fits in his 9 month clothes anymore and is constantly doing new things. Some of his favorite current pastimes include: being pushed or pulled on a little car or wagon, standing (for some reason getting him to sit is hard sometimes now), being pushed on a swing, eating (his favorites are spaghetti and meatballs that I mash up in the blender, cheese, yogurt and i swear you could easily win his heart by giving him a bowl of bananas), exploring the cabinets, screaming with glee, crawling, and touching buttons on remote controls and phones. When you get down onto his level and imitate him, play peek a boo or put your face close to his and kiss him loudly, he will laugh and laugh. If I am laughing and holding him, he will laugh, too (guess he wants to be a part of the joke). He loves being read to and will listen intently for longer than you'd think. Just yesterday for the first time he pulled himself up to standing on the dishwasher (such a nice boy, he wanted to help me unload) and this morning I heard him crawl into the bathroom and went in there and he was standing up holding on to the bathtub. Crazy! Lately, he is a bit more defiant in that when I put him down for bed, instead of laying down and going right to sleep like he used to, he now springs right back up and sits in his crib, "unwinding" for a while. His vocabulary is still pretty limited. He says dada, baba and just yesterday said mama. All day I kept saying, "Mama?" to see if he'd do it again and he'd look at me with a blank stare. He said it again today, but I don't think he knows what he's saying quite yet. I am surprised he doesn't say Bella, for as much as he delights in Bella the dog's every move. Bella is quite smart to be afraid of him! She remains gentle with him and licked his face this evening, but smartly went running when he tried to join her in her dog bed.

He drools constantly and goes through numerous bibs every day. He also continues to leave his mark, with spit up spots all over our carpeting. When does this teething thing end? Our sweet boy gets quite discontented with the teething and has been this way for a few weeks now. I sure wish they'd all get in. Right now, he has top and bottom four completely in, one on the top halfway, and the other top middle one just broke through. His gums are all swollen and I'm starting to think that I might have to get some Orajel, even though most peds don't recommend it. The poor thing. His non-teething personality is so much more pleasant. Don't get me wrong, he is still easygoing, but for the past two months, everytime he has a tooth, he is hard to please and gets bored after about 10 minutes in one place, so I have to move him all around the house all day long to keep him happy if we are at home. I really hope I'm not spoiling him, by keeping up the constant entertainment. We continue to have opportunities to "get out" and see people every single day and JM seems to appreciate this as much as I do. We are mostly at home, but a single outing to meet someone for a walk or coffee once a day is really nice. I am thrilled with the ladies that I've met via the Meetup playgroup, the St. T playgroup and the Nest. We continue to love our music class. We are not bored. At all.


We are still breastfeeding quite a bit. I am not ready to stop and cringe thinking about Mexico in a little over a month. I might be bringing the pump!




pics: with his new sandtable (thanks Nana and Poppa), in his new 'big boy' pajamas (waaaaah!), standing up on his own for the first time