9 months old!

Kent is growing up too fast. It's a fact. He'll be turning one before I know it!! I've got to savor these moments, as hard as some can be. I love spending my time caring for this little guy.

He's constantly on the move and pulling himself up, getting into all kinds of trouble.

His new favorite things are the rolling chair in the kitchen and the GE "button" on the dishwasher. He loves to play with the tassels on the kitchen rug and try to open cabinets. He hasn't figured it out yet, but it's about to happen.

He still takes his 9 am and 1 pm naps, goes to bed around 7-7:30 and wakes up at 6, sometimes in the 5 am range. I used to bring him into bed with us if the clock had a 5 on it, and snuggle up and snooze some more, but he will have nothing to do with this thing called "laying down". Instead, he climbs all over us, nearly throwing himself over the edge, or head butting us, or kicking us. It's useless.

Food is another major development this month as he feeds himself more and more each week. He will still accept purees/oatmeal/yogurt/hummus/etc from a spoon, but several times he has closed his mouth and reached for the spoon himself. I've given in a few times, all while cringing. I've also just given him his own clean spoon to play with while I feed him. I won't be surprised if he insists on feeding himself with a spoon in another month. Our refrigerator is full of tiny tupperware containers with Kent sized portions of food. It takes a lot of work to prep all of that, and it's been challenging to be in this transition phase from purees to finger foods, but like everything else, it's a stage. The cleanup is a much longer phase, but it must be done because ants have learned where he sits.

We're working on sippy cup skills and he's gotten some milk and water out of them, but he prefers the bottle still. We'll just try to go slowly and give him a chance to explore and bang it around. He loves Mama and Papa's water bottles though! Maybe we should drink out of sippy cups to model. I'm trying to teach him signs for "more" and "please" and "all done". We'll see how far that goes.

This month, Kent met his Great Grandma Kay and Great Grandpa Gus. We enjoyed showing him the newborn calves and the hay bails and other farm equipment.

Here are all 4 generations!

Kent also met his Uncle Peter, who had a fun beard and glasses to play with. Lots of smiles to go around here.

Other new things included:
a backyard pool experience outside:

a bonfire at Aunt Kara and Uncle Matt's house: (Pat's allergic to pine trees but she didn't want to miss out on all the fun!)

a hike at Letchworth park with Kara and her boys:

a man's work project (building a bike stand):

visiting Great Grandma Dolly:

 hanging out with cousins - but we miss Bo!!

a move to a new state:

Life is good at 9 months. Can't wait to see what new friends he'll meet