9 months

Happy 9th month birthday, sleeping beauty! As I type this, Ava is still sleeping soundly upstairs, a nice change from her 6am wake up calls we had until quite recently. Pretty soon we'll be walking into her room to wake her up for school!

She has her 9 month check-up today. I don't know if she gets any shots today or not; I sure hope not! I think she'll be much like she was at her 6 month check-up: high percentile in height and medium percentile in weight; she's definitely heavier, but she's not what one might call a "chunky baby."

She does have one tooth that has broken through the gum and one tooth that is visible just below the gum line. I brace myself for bites now. I'm still nursing. Yesterday while nursing, Ava held my finger. She stopped nursing, looked at me, put my finger in her mouth and chomped down. It didn't hurt but it was definitely deliberate - she's learning to use all these new tools!

She army-crawls everywhere - her favorite places to visit, in particular order: the fireplace, the place we keep our shoes, and the little laundry basket I keep in the living room for spit-cloths and bibs. She also loves Indi's tail (and often gets dangerously near the rear end!), some of Indi's toys and chewing on the plastic bin that holds the clean bibs.

She uses all her words - mamamama, dadadada, nananana, ba ba ba - and loves to see just how loud she can shriek when she's having fun. My ears ring sometimes.

She loves "flying baby" after tubby time - I put on her diaper after I've dried her off and ask if she's ready for flying baby and she gets so excited. She waves her arms up and down and shrieks. Then I throw her in the air five times and she opens her mouth and has the most joyful expression on her face.

She loves to make music on the wind chimes before and after naps. I have a wind chime hanging in the dining room. As we walk by on our way to nap time, I ask her if she wants to make music. She looks at me and then looks in the direction of the wind chimes. I hold her up and she looks at me again. "Go on, you can do it!" and she reaches up and pushes the big wooden piece that hits all the chimes. She loves it!

She loves her books. After nursing before bed, she'll often look around the room and I always ask her where her books are. She immediately looks behind me at the wall bookshelf and smiles. She no longer eats books; instead she likes to flip them around (hasn't quite got the hang of turning each page yet).

She can sit up on her own from crawling and laying down and now, more often than not, I find her sitting in her crib after nap time. Not pulling up to standing just yet, but I'm sure that's not far away.

Mostly she's just a happy little busy body. She gets into everything, likes to look at and touch everything. She slobbers, she drools, she chews everything.

We're 3/4 through with the first year. Time to start planning the birthday celebration!