Playtime: We bought him a Peapod tent and have that set up in the living room. He enjoys crawling in and out of it and playing with all the toys. His absolute favorite thing to do is to play with the balls we have. He loves to throw them and then crawl over and get them. Or if we are willing to walk around with him, he will kick the ball and follow it. He also loves to help Mommy with all sorts of chores. The dishwasher is one of his favorite things. Anything on the bottom shelf is fair game to him and he gets what he wants and then pounds away on the floor. Doesn’t matter if clean or dirty. He is just recently figuring out how to take things out of boxes and put them back in. He does it a lot with his books. He is really good at getting them all out, but only gets about half of them back in before he moves on. He figured out how to wave a week ago. It isn’t consistent, but he will do it occasionally.
Sleep: Bedtime is still a routine and fairly easy. We still have the occasional bad nights, but 95% of the time they are a full 12 hours. Naptimes are down to one nap a day. He goes down for his nap between 2-3 hours after he wakes up. Then he sleeps for 2.5-3 hours and is up until bedtime. Occasionally, he gets fussy if he had a rough night and then he will take two naps, but most of the time it is a single nap.
Food: Still eats everything. We gave him watermelon and he absolutely loves it! He can take bites of things, so we don’t always cut them up as small as we use to. He doesn’t like purees and only likes to feed himself. We have been giving him silverware and usually he just holds onto it in one hand while he eats with the other. The last two days have been a turning point and he will use a fork to stab something but then take it off the fork with the other hand before eating it. Today was the first day he actually used the fork to put stuff in his mouth.
Teething: The beginning of the month was terrible! He cut the upper left, then cut the upper right. After a day of relief, he started cutting the next outside two. So now he has four on top and the two on the bottom. The top ones are still working their way down, but they have cut through the gums.
Clothes: Very few 9-month outfits fit. We should probably just put them away which will happen after the move. We are moving him into 12-month outfits and occasional 18-month ones depending on the brand. He has really long legs, so he outgrows pants faster than he outgrows the tops.
Movement: He’s getting faster everyday. We turn our backs for a second and he is gone. He loves going to the stairs and laughing and when we notice, he races up as fast as he can. He has occasionally stood on his own not holding onto anything, but it only lasts for a few seconds. We can now just hold one hand and walk next to him and he will keep his balance. We are so close to walking. I am thinking that he won’t do it until late July, but Darrell thinks it will be by the end of June. He pulls himself up on everything. He use to need something to hold onto to stand up, but now he can use a flat wall and can still get up.
