Whimsical Walde's: Nine Months Old!

I can't believe that my little chunk monkey is nine months old! He is sure growing and changing so fast. It seems as if he progresses a little each day, sometimes even each hour! We went to the doctor for his nine month checkup and of course she commented on how healthy he is and how social he is. (Surprise, surprise my children like to talk!) Here are his stats:

Height : 26 1/4 inches (3%) (Shouldn't be too surprised that he's on the short side), Weight: 19 lbs. 12 oz. (45%) Head Circumference: 45 1/2 cm. (50%)

Caiden is still very happy most of the time. He does however have a bit of a temper. Recently he has started throwing fits when I change his diaper, try to get him dressed, clean him up after eating, or when Ayla takes a toy or some other object away from him. When he gets mad he literally makes a fist and shakes it at you. I think he picked it up from Ayla because that's what she does when she's being overly dramatic. But it's so funny when Caiden does it. If I can get a picture of it I'll post it. It looks like he should be saying "Why I oughta..." with a Brooklyn accent.

He recently got his first tooth, a bottom one. (January 14) He also crawls now. He doesn't crawl on his knees. He more does a belly flop. He pushes up with his arms, then pushes off the floor with the toes on his left foot, gets up and then flops back down on his belly. It sounds painful but it's effective for him and he's really quick. Just in the last couple of days he has started to get up on his knees and move around more that way, so I'm sure he'll be crawling in a more normal fashion any day. He LOVES tooling around in his walker. He also LOVES being in his jumper ( the type that hangs from the door frame.) I have to be careful when he goes in it though because he really gets jumping and then he starts to swing back and forth and one time he ran himself into the door frame. He can stand against something now, and will hold onto something and take a few steps. He hasn't yet tried to pull himself up to a standing position but I'm sure that's not too far away. He just recently discovered that doors on cupboards open. This is his new favorite game. He will crawl over to a cupboard pull it open an inch or two and then let it fall back into place with a loud bang. He thinks it's so funny. He hasn't quite figured out yet, that in order to get the door to open all the way he has to back up so it doesn't bump into him. I'm sure that skill will be acquired anytime now. He also is super curious and will investigate anything that's new, interesting, or different. In church he will crawl over to any bags that he can get to and attempt to stick his little hands inside to see what's in there. He's also fascinated with the child proof locks I have all over everything in the house and plays with those. I'm sure the fascination is going to lead to figuring out how they work and being able to open everything before too long. He says Mama and Dada and I think he says Hi. When I come home after being gone for a couple hours I always greet him with a big smile and say "Hi!" He answers me and says "Ha!" I swear he's saying "Hi". When he's hungry he says "Mmmm Mama, Mmmm". He continues to love eating and was recently introduced to table food. He took to it like a Duck to water. He LOVES table food. He gets a little irritated with me when I try to feed him baby food now, so I usually make something that can be cut into tiny enough pieces for him to eat with his fingers. He gets so excited when I put him in the high chair and put food on his tray. His little hands and feet start waving in the air. I have to really watch him because he grabs huge handfuls and tries to cram a ton of food into his mouth at one time. It's funny how each kid is so individual and different from his/her sibling. Caiden is so very different from Ayla in so many aspects; one of them being eating. Ayla was (is) so picky. When she was a baby she would only eat certain baby foods. She resisted eating table food for the longest time because she didn't like the texture. She is still picky and often goes a whole day with eating very little food. Luckily the things she does like are healthy choices for the most part. She loves fruits and vegetables. Caiden on the other hand loves all food, he has eaten everything I've tried to feed him and eats table food with gusto.
I love my little smusher, it's hard to believe that he is nine months old. It makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy because of the independence that he's developing and sad because my little baby is getting bigger every day!

Here's some pictures of my smushy guy!

We put him in his Bumbo seat to keep him from crawling away while I was trying to take pictures...but he quickly grew irritated of being held in place and that didn't make for good pictures so we took him out and did our best.

If you look real close you can kind of see his little tooth sticking out right above his bottom lip.

Here's him crawling. The next few pictures are in succession I think they are a pretty good illustration of his unique crawling technique.

"Target acquired...place my hands"