Levi: 9 months

How can it be?  Our littlest nugget is 9 months old (July).  He is moving about and into everything.  He knows what he wants and lets us know (just like the others) when we don't respond correctly.  

After cutting his two bottom teeth he had returned to sleeping through the night, but with the move he is back to waking 1-2 times at night.  He does not easily settle, so most nights we feed him a bottle.  He typically goes to bed between 7:30-8 p.m. and depending on his night wake time he wakes up anywhere between 6:30 and 8 a.m.  He was napping well, but again the move has thrown everything off.  He continues to use his boppy and Stinkasaurus lovie for sleep.  

He eats all kinds of finger foods, but continues to spit out meat and vegetables.  I have been very leinent with him.  Meaning he enjoys french fries when we eat out, rice krispy treats when I make them for the kids, and bites of popsicles.  I may regret it later, but we are in survival mode, so for now we'll press on.  His favorite foods are blueberries, grapes, pirate's booty, beans, sweet potato fries, french fries, and watermelon.  He pincer grip is really good.  He is very accurate and almost always gets the food from his high chair to his mouth.  He is no longer taking Prevacid.

He sits independently.  He can go from sit to supine and side lying to sitting.  He pulls up into standing, but still struggles to return to a sitting position.  This posing a problem with night time sleep, because he wakes up, pulls himself into standing and cries until we come to lay him back down.  He is beginning to crawl on hands and knees, but prefers army crawling.  

He claps.  He is beginning to wave.  He says dada on a regular basis.  He has said mama and baba.  When we say dance he will shake his head back and forth.  It is super cute :)

Our Raleigh house has a play room, so he enjoys crawling around and exploring the different toys.  He plays a lot with the Fisher Price door (and all of it's accessories) and Duplo blocks, otherwise he is content crawling around in search of the next thing to pull up on.

He is wearing 12 and 18 month clothes.  Size 5 diapers for sleep and 4 during the day.  I have not taken him to his 9 month appointment, because we do not have a doctor in Raleigh yet.  The last time I took him to the doctor for pink eye he weighed 24 pounds.  He is certainly our chunky chunky love.

Nicknames:

• Little Nugget
• Nug Nug
• Little Levi
• Sweet Chunk of Love

Levi,

I look at you and I want to freeze time.  You explore and smile and laugh and grunt and fuss and do it all again.  You are a joy and we love you to pieces.  You aren't much of a smuggler, but occasionally you will snuggle your head down into my neck at night and I could hug you for days.  You complete our family and we praise God for you.

Love,

Momma