Nine months

My baby is 9 whole months old. Just tonight, the three of us were sitting at the table eating pizza (yes, the baby was eating pizza) and Ben and I could just not believe how BIG she seemed. How old she seemed. Picking up pieces of bread and cheese and eating like she had been starved, taking a quick break to throw her head back and get a swig of water from her sippy cup, making faces and cracking up with her dad from across the table. It was all just a little to much for my heart to handle.

Tuesday she had her 9 month check-up. The girl is in the 50% for weight, height and even head circumference. We have a perfectly average kid. She actually loved Dr. Krause this visit and passed the 9 month milestone checklist.

Says "mama" and "dada" - check
Pulls up and "cruises" around furniture - check
Uses her fingers to pick up food - check
Starting to throw tantrums - check

Jens loves food. The only thing that she hasn't seemed to like was a taste of oatmeal and a green olive. (Her dad gave her the green olive, just to be clear.) Her favorite foods at the moment are yogurt with blueberries, turkey, and beans of any kind. She is still nursing 4 or 5 times a day and eating 3 meals a day with us.

She goes to bed, in her crib, anywhere from 7:30 to 8:00 (or more like 10:00 or 11:00 when her grandparents are in town) and wakes around 5:00 or 6:00 to eat. She usually falls back asleep in our bed for a couple of hours.

She is into everything. And she's really fast.

She absolutely loves being outside. She sits in the grass while I water the flowers. And I wear her in the sling when I mow the grass. I didn't realize how weird people might think that is, until I caught one of my neighbors taking a picture of us with her iPhone.

We had Ben's cousins and their boyfriends over for dinner and they got her to wave all night. I haven't been able to get her to do it again. So I don't think she can claim that skill yet.

She loves to give kisses. I remember telling Ben when she was born that I wanted that to be one of the first things she learned. So I started from the beginning, saying "kiss" whenever I would give her  asmooch. Now she doesn't even need to hear the word, if you are anywhere near her face; she will kiss you. It never gets old. My favorite is when she is crying her little head off and her dad will say "kiss", she will stop crying, give him a kiss, and then start wailing again. It's a tad bit ridiculous.

**I wrote this post and took these pictures a couple of weeks ago. Oops.