nine months.

my baby is now nine months old.  he's almost been out as long as he was in - craziness.  

physical: we just had hb's 9-month appointment, so i know his stats.  
weight: 21 lbs. 4 oz. - 50%
height: 28 inches - 25%
head: 47.5 cm - 90%

so, short and chubby with a big ol' head.  ha.  seriously, i think he's about the most delicious baby i've ever seen these days.  what else?  four teeth now - two on top, two on bottom.  his hair is getting longer but is still so blonde you can hardly see it.  bluest eyes ever.  

likes: in order (from what i can tell): emme.  pulling up to standing.  nursing.  cuddling.  food.  laughing.  crawling all over the place.  

dislikes: not being able to walk yet.  he's been crawling for maybe a week and he's already ready to be walking.  i hope he takes his time...right now he's in the super fun attached to mom phase where he gets upset if i am not looking directly at him/100% engaged with him.  

biggest achievement of the month: the biggest deal this month is the crawling!  he is learning fast and on the move.  he crawled down the entire hall by himself the other day, as well as from the living room all the way into the bathroom to see what ek was up to.   

biggest challenge of the month: hollis got his two top teeth this month and that wasn't the most fun thing ever.  but even though they are bigger and more intense than his bottom two, i think he handled them better, so there's hope for the 16 more teeth we'll be working on over the next year or so.  

nicknames: the duder has remained pretty consistent with nicknames.  no new ones come to mind this month. 

sleep: oh, sleep.  well.  between the new teeth, the crawling, the trip to louisiana, and whatever other random things you might want to cite, we are still not really sleeping all the way through the night.  but we're making some progress here and there.  it's hard.  i know he doesn't need to nurse at 4am.  but i need him to go back to sleep quickly so i can pretend to get 2 or so more hours of sleep before getting up for work.  so.  it's a work in progress.  

temperament/personality: such a fun, funny, loving kid.  he's much better about entertaining himself than ek was at this age (especially if you just give him a minute to get over being annoyed that you're not paying attention to him).  sweet as can be.  

eating: all the things.  so far, he's not wild about bananas, but he will eat almost everything else.  i let him feed himself food in whole form.  lately he's tried quinoa, beef stew, pork tenderloin, kiwi, and probably a couple of other new things.  

motor development: it's weird that only a month ago, hollis wasn't even really getting himself into a seated position independently.  now, only weeks later, he is crawling up on all fours and pulling up (sometimes).  he loves to bear weight on his legs but is still a little unsteady on them.  he's not creeping or trying to take steps yet (even holding on to furniture or humans), but he's thinking about it.  

i'll try to post pictures a little sooner this time.