9 Months

Wow! Where has the time gone? And this past month in particular has been quite a doozy.

Let's see, shortly after turning 8 months, Elsie

1. Decided it was time to crawl.
2. Two days later, she decided that it was probably time to sit up on her own (rolling onto her stomach and pushing back into a sit).
3. A couple of days after that, she decided that those two new skills would be complemented with being able to pull up onto her knees.
4. Within a week, that turned into pulling up to a stand.
5. In the same week, she started consistently babbling her Bs (still working on mamama...no luck yet, while Eli pushes dadada...no luck for him either)
6. And she started getting mad if we took something away from her, say, anything that has a cord.
7. And she, as of a few days ago, has started tentatively cruising down the length of the couch to get to what she wants.
8. Today, she was standing up in the playpen while Eli was folding clothes, and she fell backwards onto her bum and said, "Uh-oh." And then she did it again, just to prove it wasn't an accident. And then, just to confuse us, she spent about two minutes going through a string of "uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-ohs".

The pulling up has become second nature, as if she's been doing it all along. Crazy girl. She likes to pull up on our headboard and slap the wall behind it. And she likes to stand facing the cushions on the back of the couch and jump up and down. We are going to have a bed jumper here.

Nine months. It just doesn't feel like it has been that long. And the little girl we have has been infused with so much more life in the last month--a spirit of adventure and exploration. She's getting more bold while I'm getting more tired.

She's going to walk before she's a year old in May--that's my prediction. She tried a couple of times to stand up in the middle of the floor but lost her balance. Eli has held her and then let her stand and balance on her own, and right now she can do it for under ten seconds. That is sure to change as rapidly as she did over the last month.

Okay, time for grading papers. I must do this. And there might be a football game on in the background.

Cheers.