9 months!

Julian is 9 months old! Last week we went to the doctor for his checkup: he weighs 17 pounds 2 ounces, and is just over 27 inches tall.

Recently he's gone from a little guy who scoots around on his tummy to a boy who wants to walk, everywhere, all the time. He can't quite walk on his own yet, so he cruises around the furniture, holding on to the couch or the coffee table or the fireplace (or, alarmingly, the kitchen drawers), or he convinces his parents to hold his hands so he can charge across the house. He can crawl on his hands and knees, too, but that's not nearly as exciting. He knows how to climb the stairs, though now that he's more into standing than crawling, he'd rather just stand at the foot of the stairs and pound on them. He likes to drive around the house with anything that's not nailed down: the full laundry basket makes an excellent walking toy, as do the knitting basket and the dining chairs.

We've shifted his solid food consumption from purees to finger foods, mostly in self-defense, as he will try to grab any spoon within reach whether it has carrots on it or not. Recent favorites include: cherries, blueberries, mango, peas, diced carrots, Cheerios, and cheese. He's remarkably efficient at picking up little bits of food and stuffing them in his mouth, and after eating for a few minutes he gets very chatty. Where by chatty, I mean loud. He's very proficient with a sippy cup and can drink from a regular cup with assistance (he can hold it himself, but will fling it away after he's done drinking).

A few weeks ago it was 65 degrees and sunny on Sunday, so we walked to the park and Julian played on the baby swings for the first time! He thought that was just great, and he also enjoyed going down the slides on our laps. We've also been having a few playdates recently; we went to the park with Anjalie and her parents, and we went to the swimming pool with Milo and Daphne and their moms and then had lunch at the bakery, where Julian had a little bit of mommy's margherita pizza and shared a big fruit salad with Daphne.

He can play peekaboo and pattycake, and he has all sorts of consonant-vowel syllables (ba, da, wa, ma) and growls and gurgles. He's completely lost interest in pacifiers. He knows how to put toys into containers and take them back out again. Being upside-down is hilarious, as is being chased by Daddy. He likes to blow raspberries on our arms, he tries to grab our noses at every opportunity, and he gives his mama big sloppy kisses on the cheek!