Dear Joseph,

You’re 9 months old, baby!

You are such a sweet, creative, smart, strong little boy.  I’m so happy that you’re our son and that we have the privilege of raising you 🙂

Movement

In addition to crawling everywhere and getting into everything, you’ve also started “cruising”, or moving around while standing and holding on to furniture/toy bins/people/whatever you can reach.  You stand unassisted for several seconds now.  It’s fun to watch you as you grow in independence, even if only for a teeny tiny moment before you land on your bum!

Eating

You love to eat.

You eat 3 meals a day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  You nurse first thing in the morning, before your morning nap, before your afternoon nap, and before bedtime at night.  You use a cup, but water’s the only thing other than breastmilk that you drink.  We’ll keep it that way for awhile!  You’re eating homemade pea soup in the photo above.  Watching you eat it was hilarious – you loved it so much that you started lunging for the spoon after a few tastes, and toward the end you were crying in-between bites.  Everytime you got some in your mouth, you’d make a loud, “Mmmmmm” noise.  Too cute.

Talking

Lots of baby talk, but no official words.  You do make the “dadda” sound a lot, but I don’t think it means anything.  You’ll get there, though!  You still like to play copycat with us – we make a sound, and you make it back.  You make a sound, and we make it back.  So fun!

Sleep

Still napping in the morning for about an hour, then in the afternoon for about 2 hours.  At night, it’s bedtime around 7pm and then you’re up at 7am in the morning.  You have your rough days, to be sure.  Today, for example.  You completely skipped your morning nap, then went down for the afternoon nap over an hour early.  I don’t fuss about it too much, since it’s not a pattern.  I’m already dreading the time when you go to only one nap a day.  Hopefully that won’t be for another few months!

Other Bits and Pieces

In addition to clapping your hands, you’ve also started waving!  It’s fun to say “bye bye” or “hi” and watch you flap that little arm.  You also still love to read.  You flip through books like nobody’s business, and there’s always a stack of them lying around.  Some of your favorites for us to read to you are “Where is the Green Sheep?”, “One Fluffy Baa Lamb, Ten Hairy Caterpillars”, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, “Beep Beep, Peek-a-Boo”, and several nursery rhyme books.

And last but not least, here’s a cute little video of you and your daddy, playing “keep-away”.  You make the most hilarious face, and I promise to remind your dad of it whenever he starts to exasperate you!

And here’s another one, just so you won’t think your dad does nothing but tease you. You LOVE to play with him and he loves to play with you!