Almost 9 months old

Baby’s 9 month old mark is early next week so here are nine interesting little tid-bits about the kid. 

1.  He knows how to throw.  This is very fun when it involves the two of us sitting on the floor facing each other and we throw a ball back and forth with total satisfaction for thirty minutes.  This is not so much fun when I put him in the crib to sit and play while I fold laundry and hang clothes in his room and he pitches everything in his crib over the rail. 

2.  He is still only going backwards (and that’s only sometimes) with his crawl.  And he’s still getting stuck.  Forward motion is close.  He just needs to take a leap of faith.   

3.  He loves the outdoors.  We try to head outside a lot during the day. 

4.  Eating puts him out.  He clamps his little mouth shut in protest as he would rather be doing anything else but eat.  His mother, however, is willing to wait him out.  When I was a child, my dad employed what I called patience drills, going as slow as possible when I started to whine to teach me to be patient (and to quit whining).  It worked.  Today, I can wait through anything including baby’s meal strikes. 

5.  Loves him a rubber duck.  We have them all over the house, the car, everywhere. 

6.  He is intensely curious and will swivel head to keep his eye on the prize.  It’s fascinating to watch his persistence.   

7.  We knew two months ago, easily, that he was strong-willed.  Isn’t it fascinating that you can perceive that about a baby?  We’ll see if that ends up being the case but, so far, all signs say yes. 

8.  He listens to Bach all night long.  Before we caught onto the fact that he wanted it on all night long, he would wake up in protest when the cd ended (except we didn’t know that is what he was protesting).  While the cd player in his room didn’t have repeat on it, we found an old boom box (you know the ones the size of a laser computer printer) in the garage that has repeat on it and it now takes up most of the real estate on top of his dresser so that Bach can play 12 hours straight.  We started with Beethoven but have moved on to Bach.  Since his room is right next to ours, BF and I decided that we had to get a cd whose entire offerings we both liked.  Funny how I used to have to sleep in absolute silence and in the pitch black dark.  Neither matters anymore. 

9.  He still loves Lola more than she loves him.  In fact, any dog is good by him.  And any other baby is good by Lola.  Just not a baby who stays in her house. Forever.  But he’s starting to drop food and she’s starting to realize that the place to be during mealtime is right by baby’s side.  Now, if he’d just stop latching onto her hair and pulling with all his might (trust me, I understand Lola, I gave up two more inches of hair to the hairdresser’s scissors last week), they could be buds.