Nine Months Old

Dear Nathan,

Nine months old! 

You have switched from army crawling to hands and knees crawling and methodically work your way around the house. You are getting faster very quickly. We had our first top of the stairs scare which had Dad charging from the bottom and me from the top to prevent you from going over the side. You let out a little whimper cry laugh in response. Now we have the gates up. 
In conjunction with crawling you sit yourself up with ease. You have perfect posture, sitting upright. You still utilize previous techniques for getting around occasionally. The other day you tried falling backward to get to a laying down position so you could roll around to your next destination. You have explored every detail of our main floor very thoroughly and are now starting to pull yourself to a kneeling position to see what’s on the next level. 
You have been a very independent player/explorer. You are so serious about your work that I don’t dare interrupt you and feel bad when I do have to separate you from your case of study (either because you are chewing something too small or we need to relocate). 

You are showing interest in reading books together and on your own. You use one finger very deliberately to feel different textures, look at something closer, or put your finger to our mouths (your current area of fascination). When you are sitting up on the floor you sometimes wave both arms up and down and you get really excited and animated when we wave our arms back to you. You like drumming on different objects and are starting to realize you can hit one object with another.  
Your adventurousness extends to bath time. You enjoy baths, sitting up and chewing on a toy, and splashing. This lasts for about a minute and then you are determined to crawl around the tub and pull up the drain. You are becoming very strong and it takes great effort to keep you safe in the water. 
You have started conversing with us by saying, “bah, bah, bah”. We can go back and forth for a few minutes together. The other consistent expression you make is, “aaaaahhhhhhh” when you want us to feed you or you are frustrated and occasionally when you are excited. When you are excited you always do a full body flex that makes your whole body shake and looks like you are trying to blast off. 
You love all food. We haven’t found anything that you will even hesitate yet. You eat green smoothies with us in the morning, a few jars of baby food during the day, and whatever we have on our plates during meals and snacks. You are starting to get the hang of feeding yourself. You have a repeated trick with peaches: I find the skin if the peach sneaking out (Emily’s phrase) of the roof of your mouth a couple hours after we have eaten. You have three teeth now that have opened up more food options, and three more that look like they could appear soon. You have also started grinding those three teeth together.
For the last two weeks you have slept through the night (with a few exceptions). This is a wonderfully exciting development. You still cry a bit before falling asleep and you have started waking up in the middle of he night just to be held. We went in the first two times and now we just let you put yourself back to sleep.
The last few days you have been very aware of where I am and you want to be held most of the time. We think there is a strong correlation between hunger and exhaustion and your wanting to be held. 
You are a fun part of our family, our joyful boy. We are so grateful for the smiles you bring and how you cheer us all up.
Love you!

Taking pictures was almost inpossible. You kept flipping yourself around while laughing, thinking we were playing some fabulous game of chase.