9 months

9 in, 9 out. The time is just seemingly flying by. I love my little guy so very much and am happy and sad at the same time over the fact that he is growing up. He is still such a smiley baby and I love his smiles. He gives slobbery open mouth "kisses" where he tries to suck on your nose/chin/check. He gets jealous if anyone else is in mommy's lap 90% of the time. 


At 9 months Micah is
- crawling (and has been for almost 3 months now since a little over 6 months old) 
- pulling up 
- still not really eating too much baby food (with the exception of a couple weeks over Christmas to prove me wrong when everyone else was around to see it!)
- eating and trying finger foods 
- following mommy around like a shadow
- has object permanence - looks for toys he drops and really notices when mommy leaves his side 
- is still toothless 
- love love loves his big sister 
- loves his daddy too - He gets excited the mornings daddy gets up to play with him 
- occasionally waves (or holds his hand up as if he was going to wave) - Gigi taught him this over the holidays
- wears 6-9 month/6-12 month clothes with some room to grow - especially in the pant length! 


And because I've done this before let's revisit the checklist of milestones.... 


Mastered Skills {most babies have mastered}
• Stands while holding onto something
• Jabbers or combines syllables
• Understands object permanence


Check, check and check. Micah can even stand by himself for a good 20-30 seconds after he has pulled up on something. 

Emerging skills {half of babies can do these}
• Cruises while holding onto furniture
• Drinks from a sippy cup
• Eats with fingers
• Bangs objects together


Micah can cruise on the furniture somewhat taking a few steps in either direction but doesn't cruise a lot yet - but he's started cruising more in the past couple days. Mostly he'll get down and then get back up though. He still has yet to figure out the sippy cup - he'd rather play with them or throw them on the floor. He does eat with his fingers - would much rather do that than me feed him but it depends on what I give him to pick up if he wants to eat it or not (puffs - yes, broccoli not so much.) Bangs objects together - not really though he does love banging on things like a drum does that count?


Advanced skills {a few kids can do these} 
• Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo
• Says "mama" and "dada" to the correct parent


Umm... skip over the patty-cake and peek-a-boo for a minute and let's focus on the whole mama/dada thing. Looking back at the table saying mama and dada were mastered skills for an 8 month old. Guess not so much when you have a big sister. Micah still is not saying them yet. Beau will swear to you that he's said dada but unless it just came out in the middle of a bunch of other jibber jabber I don't think so. Abby didn't start talking early either - in fact she didn't say mama until 16 months (used to have it down to the day because it took so long - she always knew where mama was so she just never bothered to say it) We are hoping Micah isn't following in those footsteps but doesn't look like it so far.... but maybe since I typed this out he'll start to prove me wrong. 
Micah loves peek-a-boo and even will do the blanket himself sometimes! We haven't really done any patty-cake. Guess we'll start now!  

Happy 9 months baby boy!  {And now can you stop growing so fast?!} 



Please excuse the out-of-focus pictures. It was hard enough to get a shot of him standing let alone focus on him!