nine months of colin

Happy nine months, Bud-bud! First the biggest news from month nine: I'm happy to announce that, after many months of drool and chewing, a tooth has finally emerged! The bottom left tooth poked its ridgy self through on pi day. No news yet on its neighbor, but I'm expecting it to emerge any day now.

Colin easily pushes himself into a sitting position now. He loves pulling up on the play kitchen and pushing a walker around. He can easily crawl on his hands and knees, but he reserves that method for when he's on rough surfaces like carpet or grass. On wood floors, he prefers to slither on his belly because it's faster. He sleeps from about 7pm to 6:30am with two naps during the day. He settles himself to sleep in his crib by sucking on one pacifier and cuddling the other. (Or chucking them both out of the crib and screaming just to get one more glimpse of our faces before bed.)

It's kind of hard to tell when a baby says their first word. He says dadadada all the time, but does he really associate it with Dad? As far as I can tell, "ha-da ha-da" just means, "I'm going about my baby-business," and, "DADADA" means "GET ME OUT OF MY @$%@#*$%@ CRIB!!" The one word he's definitely figured out is, "hi." When he sees us, we get an immediate, "haa!" and a vigorous, floppy-wristed arm wave. Therefore, I'm officially declaring that Colin's first word is, "Hi." He also clapped for the first time this morning!

We've introduced a few new foods this month including melts, strawberries, rice, and teething biscuits. Big fan of everything. The first time Mae tried rice, she gagged on one grain for about 10 minutes, so I was cracking up every time Colin smiled up at me with a big, open mouth full of rice and drool.

Colin is just starting to have an attention span for books. He loves the flaps in "Dear Zoo," the animals in "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and the little owl finger puppet in our "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" book.

Colin's spitting up hit an absolute peak this month. He was up to about 15-20 spit ups per bottle. Yeah, per bottle. It's A LOT. Per the doctor's advice, we've started thickening his formula with rice cereal. Thankfully, the spitting seems to have subsided over the last two weeks, so hopefully his weight gain will be back on track at his next appointment.

We were excited to have a weekend visit from (fully vaccinated) GranE and Aunt Colleen this month! Colin took a few minutes to warm up to the idea of having people in his house. When they arrived, Mae was so excited and surprised, but Colin's bottom lip was very wibbly for a few minutes. After that, he loved the attention from our visitors!

Looking forward to another exciting month of baby milestones!!