Happy Saturday, everyone! A few brief updates on Lyds.
She's still practicing her crawling and standing skills. She can stand by herself holding onto a table or her little piano and she can crawl backwards, and she can sort of military crawl. Her favorite toy right now has to be the play saucer at her Omi and Opa's house. She jumps up and down in it, making all kinds of noise, and then can't decide which part to play with first. We'll have to catch it on video - it's very cute to witness. She is babbling up a storm, especially in her crib in the morning. She sort of "talks" to herself for awhile before building up steam and politely "asking" us to come and get her up.

Lydia's fourth tooth is about to break through! She seems to have a lot of teething pain today - poor thing.

Also, Lydia has new artwork on her wall! Her Grammy Kreutz painted this special art just for Lydia! We LOVE it. Oliver hung it on her wall today.

Lydia is learning to eat the chunkier Stage 3 meals and real "table foods" and it's pretty funny. She was not too keen on the "Turkey and Vegetable" meal I just tried to feed to her. I added some sweet potatoes (a food she really likes) and then offered some small pieces of banana, but by that point she was completely irritated with me and wasn't going to open her mouth for anything!
Happy Saturday!

We thank God for a beautiful, healthy baby! Lydia visited her Pediatrician this morning for her 9 month check-up. She is by all counts normal, healthy and developing well.

As you'll see below, our little Lyds is still off-the-charts spectacular! 24.6 lbs (>95th percentile!), 29 1/4 inches long (95th percentile) and her head appears to be in proportion at 18 cm (90th percentile). Grow baby grow!

Hello Everyone! We haven't found a lot of time to post lately, but I did want to stop by this morning to announce that Lydia has a new tooth coming through on the top! Tooth #3! It's such a shame they have to go through all of this just so this set can FALL OUT in 7 or 8 years' time! She's still experimenting with crawling and yesterday, using the handle bar on her new "go and grow" cart, she took several steps. (Daddy was there to keep her hands on the handle bar and push her a little, but she stepped with her feet completely on her own. Video coming soon.) Tomorrow she visits her Pediatrician, so we'll have her latest stats to share with you. We were asked to complete the latest ASQ before her appointment (Ages and Stages Questionnaire). It asks a series of questions specific to her age, pertaining to her gross motor skills, fine motor skills, social development (etc.) and for each item we check a box indicating whether our child is doing that activity regularly, sometimes, or not yet. We completed one for her 6 month check up also. Some items are very easy to answer, but others pertain to things I haven't observed one way or the other! Such as, "Does your baby use both hands equally well?" Or, a better example, "Does your baby try to pick up a crumb or cheerio by using her thumbs and all her fingers in a raking motion, even if she isn't able to pick it up?" Huh? I tested her on the few things I wasn't sure about over the weekend. Otherwise the questions are pretty straightforward, like "Does your baby make sounds like "da", "ga", "ka", and "ba"?
Oh yes she does... In fact, this morning at 6 AM she was in bed doing just that - talking to herself. Pretty cute!