9 Months

It is hard to believe but our sweet little boy will be 9 months old on Saturday. The time has just flown! My days are filled with loves from my fun little boy.

He now scoots all over. Every once in a while, he will crawl a few steps...paces... uh...you know what I mean ;), but he always decides it is just faster and easier to army crawl/ scoot where he wants to go. And boy is he FAST! Especially when he sees something he's not supposed to get into (namely cords...computer chargers, ribbon, backpack straps, you name it, he'll get it.) Yesterday he discovered that the grate over our vent makes a fun noise when he strums it. And the day before he discovered that the drawer under our stove makes a fun noise when he bangs it. He likes to slap the floor too. He REALLY likes it when I sit him on my lap at the piano and just let him bang on the keys and play a "song." This morning I set up the gate at the end of the hall to keep him out of trouble while I showered, and peeked out at him to find him kneeling by it, hanging on, and bouncing up and down. He also enjoys to do a "Downward Facing Dog" yoga position. He gets up on his hands and feet and just hangs out. When he wakes up from his naps, and occasionally in the morning, he'll start talking to and playing with his stuffed animals in his crib. I crawl in there and play peek-a-boo, popping up over the side of the crib. He's now figured out that if he pushes the bumper down he can see me and bonk my nose. He loves that! This kid keeps me on my toes all day long!

Some of Jackson's favorite games are Pat-A-Cake, This Little Piggy, Eensie Weensie Spider, I'm a Little Teapot, Popcorn Popping, Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, and, of course his Peek-A-Boo. If he is grumpy, we can almost always cheer him up with one of these games. He likes to grab onto my hair if it's not pulled back, so it's usually in a pony tail. He also likes to play with my nose while I nurse him (which I don't really appreciate, because he digs his nails into my nostrils and it really hurts), and to play with my teeth. Maybe he'll be a dentist?

Jackson has 4 teeth now...almost anyway. That 4th one is taking it's sweet time coming all the way in, and is greatly disturbing our sleep at night, because Jackson wakes up hurting, and I'm a softie and go in and cuddle him. Sometimes I just bring him back to bed with me, but I really need to stop doing that, because then neither of us...or I guess I should say none of the 3 of us sleep well when I do that. We go back to the doctor for his 9 month check up on Monday. I hope he's gained some weight...the little skinny guy was in the 5th percentile for weight at his 6 month check, down from like 17th 2 months before that. He eats really good, solids 3 times a day and nursing 3 or 4 times a day, and usually a bottle every day too. He's just constantly moving. We shall see. We just barely moved him to size 3 diapers...not because he'd outgrown size 2 though. We moved him up because I can get a bigger box of Luvs for about $10 cheaper than a box of Huggies, so as soon as he hit 16 pounds (or almost, since I don't know exactly what he weighs) we made the switch. All of his 6-9 month clothes fit him just fine length-wise, but are huge around him. As he scoots around the house, his pants usually come off and he just scoots around pant-less. I call him my pant-less wonder :) Some days I wonder why I even bother. Not to mention, he hates getting dressed, and sometimes the pants just don't make it back on after a diaper change before he runs away.

We've already been to the zoo twice this year. Mom and Dad Pond gave us a zoo membership for Christmas. Jackson loves to be outside, I love to get my exercise. We're going to spend lots of time at the zoo. I think Jackson will start enjoying it more as the summer goes on too and starts to realize the animals are fun to look at. Already he was more interested the second time we went than the first. That will be a fun activity all summer long.

I could go on, but Jackson and I are going to Mom and Dad's this weekend, and I have a gazillion things to do (I'm not stalling...updating the blog was on my to-do list!). Mom and I have tickets to Time Out For Women, and Jackson is going to play with Grandpa for 2 whole days and get into all sorts of trouble. We're going to take the shuttle up (which could be interesting...5 hours on a bus with a very active baby) because the next week is Lance's Spring Break, so they'll bring us back down and play for a few days here. I'll write about that, and his 9 month check when we get home. I'll also post pictures when I get home, because I need to figure out how to download them from my google account, and attach my phone to the computer to download those pictures to my computer too (long story short, my old phone went for a swim in the toilet--thank goodness all my pictures got backed up into my Google account--and now I've got an iPhone that I'm trying to figure out how to use still)