Nine/Ten Months

Van Van, I must apologize that the following notes are all that formally materialized regarding your nine-month update:

Crawling to cruising and letting go, walking while holding our hands

Responding appropriately to gimme 5, clapping, waving bye bye is emerging, tapping knees for happy deuce song (Happy to See), babbling up a storm

Learning to use a sippy cup, enjoying big kid food at the table with family

drama king, head on the ground screaming when you are mad

enjoying books, music, other people...complete ham when someone's paying attention to you

two top teeth are in, first the right then the left

Mama's boy, fine until you see me walk in the room and then you follow me whining dramatically until I pick you up....pulling yourself up on my pant legs

Parenting, lately, has really been challenging me. You and your sister have been morphing so quickly that I barely have time to adjust before you're changing the game on me again. I am too often giving in to frustration and exhaustion and I find myself wishing that I could just live in the moment and soak you guys up a little bit, instead of constantly trying to figure out how to guide you in the right direction. This parenting gig...it is rough sometimes :)

You are FINALLY sleeping through the night after some pretty brutal sleep training. After nine and a half months of you waking me up every 2/3 hours so you could have a leisurely half asleep nursing session I decided enough was enough. You are now going down for bed around eight thirty with minimal fuss (most nights!) and waking around five thirty or six for the day. Although I would obviously prefer that you would sleep until at least seven thirty every morning like your sister (and shhhhh...don't tell anyone that I already sometimes ache for your little snuggle bod in my bed at night) I can't really complain!

You are a speedy little crawling machine and well on your way to walking. You pull yourself up on just about anything (sometimes you end up pulling things over on top of yourself!) and you get especially excited if it's something you can push around while trying out your legs. You love your walking toy and sometimes we take it out into the long hallway so you can practice without running yourself into Sofie's messes every three feet. You grin with your whole face and huff and puff and proudly careen that thing down the hall as fast as you can go until your legs fall out from under you. You are trepidatious about standing independently, but when we can trick you into giving it a try you can balance for quite awhile on your own. I'm looking forward to cheering on your first steps...it won't be much longer!

We've completely abandoned baby food and you pretty much eat whatever the rest of us are having at mealtimes. You're getting better at managing bigger chunks of food, so it has become much easier to share our daily menu with you. Your taste in foods sort of cracks me up. Given the vehemence with which you denied baby food it's a welcome surprise to watch you gobble up spinach, portobello mushrooms, tofu, and asparagus. You've got a healthy (er unhealthy?!) appetite for non-foods too and we are constantly fishing things out of your mouth with trepidation. Let's just say we've called poison control more than once!

This month I'm struck by how much you understand. You can shake your head no, wave goodbye, and put balls into a container. You love to push buttons on toys and you know how to turn on your sister's Tag reader and then jab it haphazardly at a book until it rewards you with a sound. You are a music freak and you dance like a crazy man, bopping, waving your arms, and banging your head to the beat. You like to play with the toy instruments and you sing, "Ahhhhhhhhh" along with Sofie and I. You are such a happy, wonderful little soul, and the cause of much laughter in this household. You have barreled into our lives and claimed your piece of our pie and, little man, I just can't imagine it any other way!