Small Things with Great Love: 9 Months Old

Anna is 9 months old today! Time just flies! She is doing all kinds of fun stuff!

Walking:
She started taking steps in the last week or so. She started by just letting go of things and taking a step or two. But she decided that wasn't good enough and has been walking 7+ steps and going a few feet before falling! Usually it's a toy in the way, or excitement that causes her to fall. I have no doubt that she will be full fledged walking here very soon! She also learned to climb the stairs and is quite fast and very good at it. We have the stairs gated, but when we're taking her upstairs, we let her do it herself and follow behind to make sure she doesn't fall.

Eating:
She pretty much eatswhaever we eat now. She loves cheese and all fruits. She is picky about veggies, but we've decided it's not the taste she's picky about, but more like what form they come in. For instance, if sweet potatoes are mashed, she refuses them. But if they're cut fry style or cut into cubes, she'll gobble them up. Same goes for all veggies for the most part. She just wants to be independent! She also won't eat anything off of a baby spoon, we have to use a real spoon... She definitely lets her opinion be known!

Bottles/cups:
We'd cut her down to just 4 5oz bottles a month ago, and we're starting to wean her off the bottle now. She really doesn't care how it gets in her mouth, she just enjoys her few moments of formula. So I've replaced two of her bottles with sippy cups of formula. She's doing great with that! She also loves her sippy cups! She probably drinks about 20 oz of water a day from her cups. I don't know if it's cause she talks so much or what, but she's always thirsty! And thankfully, water is her drink of choice!

Talking:
Well, she does it, ALL. THE. TIME! She's saying a lot of consonants now and continues to say Mama and Dada. She now says "Mo" when she wants more and she also signs it now too. She's started fake laughing recently and will throw herself back and pretend to laugh until it becomes so funny she actually starts laughing. It's pretty cute and quite hilarious.

Clapping:
She's started clapping in the last few weeks. She tried really hard to do it before, but couldn't get the coordination down. She's very good at it now and regularlly claps for herself.

Kisses:
She does a smacking noise now when she wants a kiss. And she blows kisses, just not from her mouth yet. She puts her hand to my mouth, makes the noise herself and takes her hand away. I don't know if she thinks its funnier that way, but she won't do it to her own mouth!

Sleeping:
She's still a fantastic sleeper, going down about 7:30 at night and getting up between 6:30-7. She had a week there where she thought it was fun to get up at like 5:30, but that seems to have stopped thank goodness! Luckily when she wakes up, she almost always just plays in her bed happily. She talks and plays with her giraffe until we come get her. I'm so thankful for my great sleeper :-)!

Ta-Da!:
Okay, I saved my favorite for last. She now sticks her hands in the air and says "Du-Da!" And she expects us to say it as well. It must be something I do a lot... So now we can ask her to say "Ta-da!" and she'll perform for us. She likes to do it after she walks or stands or does something funny. It's adorable!

Here's her mandatory 9 Month picture!

The rest of these are one we had taken. Our Christmas gift to our parents was organizing a time to get our whole family picture taken. So we took some with Jeremy's family one day and mine another. And the cool thing is that they take all kinds of groupings, including ones of just Anna! And we were given the CD and the rights to post the pictures online (just not to print them anywhere except where we got them taken).