9 Months Tomorrow

I can't believe my little buddy is going to be 9 months old tomorrow! I just got used to telling people he was 8 months old. Sheesh time flies. As I sit here now, he's taking his second nap of the day and it's a LONG one. This after days of trying to refuse the second nap or only taking 30 min naps... it's a welcome change and allows me to have some much needed catch up time!

It's still astonishing to me how much he learns every day. Over the past week or so, our book reading has evolved from Eli sitting in/near my lap for about 45 seconds, flipping the pages back and forth and back and forth as many times as possible.... to him actually sitting in my lap quietly for the duration of 4-5 books! Today he shocked me by appropriately turning the pages (just once and then letting go!) every time it was time to turn it. VERY cute. He got so excited... I'd start to turn it and then he'd grab it as if to say - nonono, I've got this, Mommy! Over the past few days, favorite books have really started to emerge. I cannot for the life of me get him interested in books about trucks/cars or my favorites... Hippos go Berserk (I have him for the first 5 pages) or Gossie. He LOVES books about animals and enjoys hearing me Moo, Growl and make monkey sounds. He does not care for my horse or dog impersonations and is ambivalent about the cat and pig. :) Speaking of cats, he LOVES chasing Riley now. (For some reason, he has very little interest in Fat Cliffy). When he sees her, he'll take off with his little army crawl after her. She (always sitting at a distance these days) does a good job of looking completely uninterested and then gets up to slowly mosey off when he gets about 3 feet away.

He is getting MUCH more confident in his pull to stand and can get up to standing from a variety of positions. His new favorite thing is to drop whatever object he's holding (because he always likes to be holding something... usually a book, piece of paper, block or sock) and then bend down to pick it up. After much figuring out, he always gets it and then promptly drops it (on purpose) again so that he can figure out another way to bend down and pick it up. It's very cute to see the wheels spinning. We spend about 80% of our day over at the barricade of furniture we've built to prevent him from getting to the cat food, litter box, stroller and dining room chairs (I know, I know... I'm no fun). He likes to stand and scoot himself along the entire distance of the barricade...then bang bang bang, drop things, pick them up, and head back so he can open/close the cabinet we keep our shoes in. Opening and closing things can last us a good hour...it's THAT fun. Who knew? Today, as a surprise, I let him stand on the counters to open and close all of the kitchen cabinets. Oh the squeals of delight upon seeing all of those new containers!

He's a pretty vocal guy, with 97% of his vocals being about DADA. We vary it up, of course... dadadDADADAdaddaaaa... dddadadadadddddaaaaaaaaDAAAAADADADA. It's great fun to listen to him get all excited. When he starts getting really loud, we refer to it as his "church voice" as he thoroughly enjoys SCREAMING DADADADA in church whenever a quiet moment comes about. He also likes singing along very loudly during communion and whenever there is a quiet part when just the cantor is supposed to be singing. Lovely.

We took him out in the snow yesterday during our big blizzard of 2010 storm... He was looking around quizzically at the snow falling and blinked a lot when snow landed on his eyelashes. He was tired so he threw a minor tantrum when we sat him down in the snow. I can't wait til he's old enough for us to take him sledding.

He's still battling his cold... stupid runny nose...be gone with you!

I weighed him yesterday on the Wii and he's about 19 lbs! Woohoo! Grow baby Eli, grow! He has his 9 month checkup next Friday.... will post more stats when I get them. :)