Number Nine

Nine has always been my lucky number.  It was my varsity soccer jersey number, Justin and I started dating on the ninth of February in 1999, my first dorm room was 309, and Justin and I got married in 2009.  It also just so happens that Jayson was born on the ninth of May, which means that this past Sunday (the ninth of February) he became 9 months old.  Yeah... nine whole months.  Which means I have three months until his first birthday.  I don't know whether to be happy about that fact or if I should start bawling.  What I do know is that month nine for Jayson has brought a lot of changes and this by far has become my favorite age of his.  He's just so much fun right now!

• For the last two weeks he's been pretty much sleeping through the night (8pm - 6am) with only a few sporadic nights that he hasn't.  
• He is becoming much more mobile.  He's starting to rock/pivot which means crawling is imminent.  
• He practically flies in his walker, smacking into kitchen cabinets, doorways, ankles, and the dog.
• He's eating baby food pretty much 3x a day in addition to nursing and his bottles.  On our home scale it has him at 19.5lbs, at the doctor's they have him at 18 lbs 3.5oz and 29 inches in length.  Either way he's still good size.  Fiftieth percentile for head/weight, seventieth percentile for height!
• We've introduced juice and water as additional liquids in a variety of trainer cups.  He thinks he's such a big boy though that he prefers his juice or water in a real cup with the assistance of mommy and daddy.  We have also tried juice boxes by squeezing so a little comes up the straw which encourages him to suck.  This is a work in progress though.
• We've inserted daddy reading time into his nightly routine
• We've begun allowing him to have bites of real food here and there, including allowing him to have pizza crust, bits of bagel, scrambled eggs, and even shortbread Girl Scout cookies.  
• He can stand while holding onto objects (i.e. his activity cube, the couch, etc).  He hasn't done so hot yet with walking from that starting point, his balance just isn't there yet.
• He says mama and dada pretty consistently now, along with a lot of other gibberish that we cannot decipher yet.  Hey, hi and "aarrrr" are also very consistent sounds from him.  His Sully doll (Monsters, Inc) growls, hence the "aarrrr."  
• We've tried teaching him simple sign language: mommy, daddy, thank you, more, diaper, no, yes, etc. So far it seems he's taken to signing daddy, and only when he's upset with mommy.  Comical and heartbreaking at the same time.
• Riley and he are so cute together.  Riley cannot stand to be further than two feet away from Jayson.  Frequently we have to intervene to save Jayson from Riley's onslaught of kisses.  Riley is putting on a little bit of weight though and we think Jayson's sharing of puffs and little crunchies are to blame.
• Within the last week we have noticed Jayson attempts to wink like daddy, although his wink involves squinting both his eyes while smiling.  It's way too adorable and he knows it.

Growing like a weed!!