9 months old today!

Anna Kate, you are 9 months old today! Three quarters of a year! Every month you just seem more and more grown up. When I started to think through the ways you are changing this month, there were so many! Here are some of the big ones:

~ You now crawl on your hands and knees more than you do your “army crawl” on your belly! You still do the army crawl sometimes (especially when mommy puts you in long pretty dresses and your knees get stuck, but mostly you crawl the right way!

~ You love to feed yourself finger foods. Lately your favorites have been little bits of bread, bananas, or grilled cheese sandwiches!

~ Speaking of food, you have now started to eat mommy and daddy’s grown-up food! It’s kind of nice to just prepare one dinner for all three of us. We had split pea soup and biscuits the other night and you loved it and today you and Mommy had whole wheat pita bread and black bean hummus for lunch!

~ At your last monthly update, you didn’t have any teeth, but now you have four! The first one to come in was your top left “fang”, then your two bottom front teeth, then your top right “fang”! (Your Aunt Sarah said you should have been a vampire for Halloween, but we didn’t listen!)

~ Just yesterday you started to clap your hands and you have been doing it all day! Every time you think something is funny, I see you clapping! You like to keep one hand stationary though, so it’s really more like you’re giving yourself five!

~ This month you finally transitioned from a 3 nap schedule to a 2 nap schedule and it’s going great! It’s nice to not have to plan our days around 3 different naptimes! You usually wake up around 6:45am, then take a nap from 9-10:45 and again from 1:15-3. Then you’re ready to get to bed between 7:30 and 7:45. You are definitely a baby who likes her schedule!

~ You still L-O-V-E to wave hi to people. In fact, sometimes we’ll find you sitting up in your crib waving at your stuffed animals when you wake up from your naps!

~ You also have started to say bye-bye occasionally, but you don’t really do it on command yet!

~ You are finally starting to do better in the nursery at church…in fact, they didn’t have to page me at all yesterday during morning worship or evening worship! I think you’re starting to really like some of your teachers in there, so that helps a lot!

~ Your favorite thing to play with at home is your set of wooden blocks. Actually, your favorite thing to do is watch Mommy or Daddy make towers with the blocks and then knock them over!

~ You have also started to play ball with your Daddy. You have a big rubber ball that you love to play with and you have just started to try to bounce/roll it back to Daddy when he bounces it to you!

~ You are starting to like standing up more and are constantly pulling up on anything you can get your hands on (usually the coffee table). You have also started to take a few steps if I hold both of your hands! I think it will still be a little while though before you’re steady enough to do it by yourself!

~ You have a new absolute favorite song that we simply call “The Farm Song” because we don’t really know the title. We learned it at the library and it’s kind of like Old MacDonald in that each time you sing it you do a different animal with a different animal sound. Anyway, we have been known to sing it for 15-20 minutes straight to keep you from falling asleep in the car before we get home for naps!

~Your other favorite song is one that we made up. Here are the lyrics: “Anna Kate-sy, she’s really great-sy, Anna Baby Kate, she’s so great!”

~ Finally, one of the biggest ways we’ve seen you change this month is how sweet and loving you have become. You have a couple of teddy bears that you are constantly “giving loves” to! You also really like to give your Mommy and Daddy big slobbery kisses! And almost every time I pick you up, you snuggle right down to my shoulder and pat me on the back. So sweet!

Anna Kate, you are so much fun to be around and we feel so blessed that God gave you to us to care for, to nurture, to teach, and to love. You are so precious to us and we love you with all our hearts! Happy ¾ Birthday, sweet girl!

And here are your pictures!

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months