Ethan: 9 Months

Yep that's a piece of asparagus I'm going to town on :-)

I managed to get my pants off...I thought they made a better hat. :-)

I can't believe my baby is 9 months! He's getting so big, I'm almost ready for another one...almost :-)
Ethan is at such a fun age, he smiles and laughs at just about anything. He squeals with delight when he sees Aaron, Micah or myself. He kicks his legs and does his "happy arms", as Aaron calls them, when he wants to be held. He recently learned to clap, and just seems so proud of himself, he'll just sit and clap and laugh as though he is entertaining the whole world with is cuteness. He gets extremely excited to feed himself his "Puffs", in- fact, as soon as he sees me pull them out of the cupboard he starts to squeal. He loves to feed himself just about anything. He's not really a fan of baby-food, but will gladly try anything that I give to him of the "non baby-food variety". He has seemed to embrace every new flavor with enthusiasm, with the exception of the avocado I let him taste today, to which he quickly started spitting and grabbing at his tongue :-)...yep, he's his daddy's boy. He is "army" crawling everywhere, and fast. He can make it from one end of the house to the other before I have time to grab the laundry basket and make it back to my room. Usually he makes a bee-line straight for big-brother's room where there are all kinds of things he is not supposed to play with and that he can choke on. It keeps me on my toes. In fact, he is always finding something that he shouldn't have, he'll pull open the door to his changing table and pull out anything that is held in plastic (wipes, diaper packages, plastic baggies) and put it in his mouth, he'll crawl around in search of any stray paper within his reach to eat, and any piece of hair or dust-bunny on the hardwood floors that he can also taste?...why do none of his cool, colorful, noisy, non-harmful or germ-filled toys interest him? It's a mystery to me. It seems that the only things that are enticing are those I am constantly trying to keep him from. He is pulling himself up onto furniture, usually just to beg to be held or to push a "forbidden" button. And he loves, LOVES to be outdoors. Even if he has to ride in his jogging stroller for an hour, he's happy because he's outside. He's getting better at sleeping through the night...curse those ear infections...but I have faith that one of these day's I'll get a full night's rest. And his daytime naps have gone from 30 min at any random time, to 2-3 hours mid-morning and 1 hour in the late afternoon. He no longer likes to get dressed and tries his hardest to pull things off as I put them on, and should earn an Olympic gold medal for squirming and crawling away before I can get a diaper on. And of course he still LOVEs his bath-time.
At his 9 mo. check up Ethan was 28 inches tall (38%) and 17 lbs (which is in the 0%) I was a little worried about that, but the doctor assured me he was growing fine and that he would just likely be long and lean. (too bad he's not a girl, I think she would really appreciate those genes more than Ety bug is going to). We are so grateful for Ethan in our lives and are always so excited and proud of every little thing that he does. We love you little bug.