9 months!

You will be nine months old tomorrow, on Christmas day. You have been delighting in taking the ornaments off the tree and dragging the presents around by their ribbons, ripping paper wherever possible.

You still army crawl, but you get around by cruising a lot -- holding onto things and essentially walking. You'll also "walk" if I hold your hands.

You babble a lot, saying "ah mama da da blah blah na na kuh puh a wa wa." You have said several words, but you don't say them all the time. The things that you have clearly said at least once include:
Mama
Dada
Odwalla (Grandma's cat)
nana (for banana)
night
bear
hi
bye
up
bow wow wow
la la la (in the context of a book that says the same)

And you are working very hard, but not quite there, on:
car
cat
duck
dog
quack
Boompah

You have just recently learned to sleep in your crib at night. You still cry for a little while, but you're getting better sleep.

Right now it's Christmastime, so you are interested in snowmen and nutcrackers, especially.

You love birds, and any time you see them, you flap your arms and say "Caw! Caw!"

You can wave hello and goodbye, and you know the signs for milk, nurse, eat, hat, bird, and you sort of know duck and no. You also point at things you're interested in.

You're a huge flirt, and in public you're always trying to get people's attention. When you finally do, you grin and act coy.

You just got your third tooth, the top front one on the right. It came in Saturday the 20th.

You fall a lot, and right now you have a big bruise on your forehead from falling off the couch. You also scratch yourself with your fingernails, usually by your eye or inside your ear. The result is that you look beaten-up a lot of the time.

You like to follow your Dad and me around the house, especially into the bathroom, and you have figured out that you can just push open that door, so we have to be pretty vigilant.

You still nurse, although we'll see how long it lasts if you keep biting me! Ouch, young lady!

You like to explore the house, opening up any doors you can, pulling on cords, pushing buttons. My laptop has fallen on the floor about three times.

Generally, though, you are a great, well-behaved, sweet baby. You love to be read to, and will listen to books for a long time. You also seem to like restaurants, and will patiently sit in a high chair as long as we are there. You also LOVE getting bites of grown-up food.

That's all for now. It's so much fun getting to know your little personality. Right now, you say "Mama" a lot, and every time I answer "yes, sweetheart. Yes my love. Yes darling." You seem to think it's a game, but I just love hearing you say Mama.