9 months in, 9 months out

It's official.  Eli has been alive long enough to gestate a whole other person.  We know this for sure as he's been alive for pretty much exactly our friend Amy's entire pregnancy and now we have little Stella on the outside.  

I'm a week late in posting this update, but he had his 9-month check-up this morning so it still counts.  He was 17 lb, 11 oz and 27inches.  This makes him itty bitty if you look at the CDC's growth chart which has a majority of formula-fed babies or fairly awesome if you look at the WHO's breastfed baby only chart.  His head remains in the 75th percentile, which I take to mean he's really smart.

He first pulled himself up around Halloween.  I feel like he's figured out how to do a ton of things in the last week.  His room has a mattress on the floor where he takes most of his naps.  Yesterday, while we were playing, he figured out how to climb off the mattress (feet first) then got himself over to his play table/toy thingy and pulled himself up to play on it.  He played for a while before cruising (walking while holding onto the mattress) over to his daddy.  When properly motivated (by say, his daddy's glasses) he can even climb back up onto the mattress.  A few minutes ago he stood unassisted.  He can definitely go from laying to sitting to standing to sitting to laying.  His crawl isn't exactly textbook or beautiful.  It's mostly a series of thrashes that accomplish the goal of getting from A to B.  I hear there are no medals for crawling really well though, so we should be good.  Ooh and he can problem solve.  As you would expect, he's not a fan of the gloves we make him wear.  Yesterday, he figured out how to do something about it.  He bit off one glove and used the free hand to remove the other glove.  

Now that he's figured out how to move, it is all he wants to do.  Must stand! Must get to dangerous and/or expensive thing over there!  Must have total disregard for the safety of my head!  I know it's only going to get more exciting from here on.  And more challenging to change his diaper.  

We've also made the transition from pureed food to finger food.  This works well for him since he has SIX teeth.  What baby needs six teeth?  Mostly, he really wants to eat whatever we are eating and we accomodate when we can.  While we were in St. Louis with Kenny's parents last week, I'm pretty sure he consumed his weight in turkey.  The boy loves meat.  One night we ate steak and made the mistake of giving him his first taste.  I'm pretty sure Kenny basically split his with Eli.  After each bite he would grunt and reach for more.  

Baby boy is turning into a little person.  Maybe next month he'll be potty trained :-).

This last picture is best if you imagine him talking with a New York accent.