Thomas - 9 months

Our boy is 9 months

We had a good week or two where everything was amazing. Thomas would play quietly by himself, rarely cried, and was almost always smiling. This past week and a half was a complete 180. Lots of crankiness, crying, and wakes up throughout the night. Hopefully the good producers of "The Wonder Weeks" are right and it's just a phase that will end soon. We did find another tooth this morning so that could also be the reason.

Changes in the last month. 

He is so close to walking on his own. He tried to take a step tonight. It's hard to find a balance between wanting Thomas to progress ahead of the curve but also wanting to push him every time he stands up so he will never learn to walk. Walking leads to destruction.

Speaking of destruction. We thought we could get away with not childproofing our cupboards because at first Thomas didn't care much about opening them. That definitely changed this past month. Let the child proofing begin.

At least it led to some good father-son bonding time. Thomas likes to help out when he can, which is really frustrating when emptying the dishwasher.

He still only has 4 teeth, but that hasn't stopped him from experiencing lots of teething pain and randomly biting me when I least expect it. Update: We wrote this post last week and since then he has acquired two more teeth.

His appetite is still amazing, although it has slowed a little. His belly is always enormous and so firm after eating. I tried to get a picture, but this just doesn't do it justice. I promise it's amazing/ridiculous.

Michael took a day off work and got to come with Thomas and I to swimming lessons. I know it's silly for a baby to be in lessons, but we enjoy them. And after seeing an 18 month old get thrown in and climb out I feel like it might be worthwhile.

We have been working on building a gate and fence to keep the chickens penned in. Thomas has been helping, of course. He especially enjoys trying to help with the power tools and/or large digging tools. He was also quite fascinated with the post holes...that is, until he fell in. (He really did fall in like this, I promise)

It's been getting colder here in San Diego (at least at night). Our house gets into the 60s and I was worried Thomas would get cold in just a sleeper. Feel free to laugh. I know 60 isn't that cold elsewhere in the world, but here in San Diego our temperature comfort zone is significantly smaller. Anyway, I didn't have his warm sleeper so we ended up dressing him like this. Poor child.

Mostly it has been a daddy-son bonding month. Thomas gets so excited when Michael comes home. The moment Thomas sees his dad he gets a big grin on his face and rushes into Michael's arms. Precious.

And then there's this...

Update: In addition to cutting two new teeth since the writing of this post, Thomas also learned how to do this.

But there is still a lot of this.