Lauren's 9 Month Checkup

So Lauren is now almost 10 months old, but here is her 9 month update. First of all, she's awesome. I mean really really fun. She motorboats, she waves hi and bye, she signs "finished" and "more," she claps, she crawls, she squeals, she hides, she plays peekaboo...this kid does it all. OK, she doesn't do it all. But for a 9 month old she does it all, in my opinion.

First, the stats. In addition to having 7 ear infections in under 10 months (yay Lauren!), at her 9 month checkup she was 17 lbs., 6 oz. (25th percentile), 27 3/4" (65th percentile) and her head circumference was 44.8 cm (75th percentile). So, both her height and weight have gone down. Her height just a bit (75th percentile last time) and her weight is way down (65th percentile last time, I think?). She is a long skinny thing, although she still looks like she is wearing rubber bands on her wrists and she has the juiciest thighs you've ever seen. Seriously. Like people come up to us in the grocery store and comment on them juicy. So I have no idea how huge they'd be if she was in even the 50th percentile.

She continues to nurse and eat baby food, but since finger foods were introduced she's way more into those. At her 9 month checkup her pediatrician said that we can start to introduce whole milk into her diet, although we haven't done that yet. For finger foods she eats cooked carrots and broccoli (currently in disfavor), sweet potatoes and green beans, eggs, pears, bananas, avocados, Cheerios, and grapes, to name a few. She likes to shovel the food in fistfuls at a time. She is drinking water out of a sippy cup, although she's not so great at tipping it up herself so we're still helping her with that.

She's also crawling with her butt off the ground! I think I mentioned that in an earlier post. We have yet to capture that on video, but I'll post it when we do. Now, some photos from the last month or so for your viewing pleasure.

Sacked out after a morning of shopping with Aunt Arie in Lawrence.

Hanging with Dad after lunch at the Happy Gillis Cafe and Hangout (let's be honest, the hands down best place in Kansas City to grab a sandwich, soup, brownie, yogurt...).

General Cheerio-eating adorableness.

Helping Mom with errands and doing one of her favorite activities: looking in the mirror.

Checking out flowers at Costco.

At the beginning of January we came home from work on a Friday evening to find that we were without heat. Luckily we have a friend who works at a hotel downtown so she got us a room and we had a staycation while we waited for it to be repaired (thanks Katie!).
These photos are from the hotel.

So there it is, Lauren @ 9 months. Every single day, Sean and I say to each other at least 10 times (I'm not kidding) how lucky we are that this little baby has joined our world. She is an absolute endless source of joy. I know it's cliche, but I love her more than I ever knew I was capable of loving. It's really easy.