9 Months!

My baby is nine months old today. Already 3/4 of his first year has gone by. I can't believe he only has three more months before turning the big 1!

Colton continues to amaze me with what he can do. He wants to do a lot of things on his own already, which can be frustrating because it feels like a battle of the wills sometimes between us. It is also pretty neat though, watching him grow into this little person who is constantly exploring the world around him.

He is so intrigued by everything these days, and anything (literally anything) can become a plaything. Last night at dinner we let him have the top to the pasta sauce pan (it had cooled down) and he had a blast turning it, banging it, and trying to chew on it while we finished eating. Colton likes to examine his toys while playing with them, too. He'll chew on something for a while, then take it out of his mouth and look at it carefully, then back in the mouth it goes! He really likes toys that play music, such as his Fisher Price telephone. His face lights up when he hears the kiddie voice singing the Alphabet Song or something else.

Colton has become quite good at feeding himself and he'll try just about anything we put in front of him. So far he's tried bits of soft cooked pasta, green beans, cheese (yellow American and Mozzarella), bagel, and watermelon. He holds onto his sippy cup with one hand and feeds himself with the other. And he LOVES Puffs. It doesn't matter what flavor, he gets all excited when he sees the container and promptly spits out his binky when we put a few down in front of him. We will sometimes hide them behind a toy or his cup and encourage him to find them. He's gotten really good at this game and the reward is always the yummy Puff and praise from us! Colton is now eating two meals of solids a day (cereal & jar of Stage 2 fruit in the morning, Stage 2 veggie or meat/veggie combo in the evening) with two snacks in between meals, in addition to the 24 oz. of formula he's been getting since about 5 months.

He's no longer content to just stay in my arms and snuggle in close (except at naptime and bedtime); he is a baby on the move! Whenever I'm holding him, he tries to reach for something interesting within his grasp. He barely sits still on my lap anymore to take his bottle. He's always looking all around, squirming to get free. Colton now takes control of how much he wants at a time. When he has to burp or doesn't want any more, he grabs the bottle and pushes it away.

Around the end of April he finally learned how to roll from his tummy to his back, and now there's no stopping him. He rolls all over the place to get to where he wants to go. Sometimes he'll rock back and forth on his hands and knees like he's going to start crawling, but he's not quite there yet. He does push himself backwards, however. Yesterday he found himself under the end table in the living room for the first time and thought that was pretty cool.

Colton is so expressive now, making all kinds of faces and gesturing. He "chatters" almost non-stop to his toys and us. He's added a few more syllables and sounds to his baby talk. Sometimes it seems like he is acting out a scene from a play with all his banter. He is such a ham, too. He'll do something funny, then watch for our response.

I've had to pack away nearly all of Colton's 6-9 month clothes and move him up to a size 4 diaper. He's the size of most one year olds already. He has a lot more hair and it is coming in beautiful! Not too fine, not too coarse. Until I got pregnant I always had really thin hair and Gregg's hair is thick, so I think Colton got the happy medium between the two. He's looking so much like a little Dutch boy these days (Gregg is mostly Dutch).

Here are some pictures (shocker) from the last month: