Dear little Bub,

You are nine months old. Nine. Three-quarters of a year.

This month you got your first two teeth—the middle ones on the bottom, first the right, then the left. We had been wondering for quite some time when they were going to come, and truth be told, we were glad to finally be able to say, “We think he’s teething” and be right. It makes us feel like we know what we’re talking about, even if it’s just for a moment. You variously like either to show your teeth by smiling with a slight underbite or to hide them altogether (this usually when someone is specifically trying to see them)—you are quite adept at blocking them with your tongue or covering them with your hand to keep them your little secret. Two on the top are coming next.

Did I really say last month that you sleep six or seven hours at a stretch? Your sleeping has been less than stellar this month—we blame the aforementioned teeth for getting you off track in the first place. The upside, however, is that in our strategizing to get you sleepy at a reasonable hour each evening, we’ve hit upon a bedtime routine that relaxes us all. Snuggling you while we listen to the Innocence Mission’s album Now the Day Is Over has become a highlight of the day (of course, it’s not foolproof, and we still resort to a car ride every once in a while).

I am afraid that you are losing interest in eating solid foods—not that you were ever that into it to begin with. You have, however, taken to Cheerios with a passion, and I have a feeling that I will be carrying around little containers of them for a couple of years to come. My latest theory is that you only like food that you can pick up and feed yourself, so we’re trying to be creative and give you a few more options there.

You are, generally speaking, a good-natured, easygoing kid, but this month you have launched a one-baby campaign against getting dressed. It’s not so much that you like being naked as much as that you hate the process of getting your diaper changed or getting your clothes on. I don’t know if it’s that you just don’t have the time for it or what, but, kid, when it comes to dressing you, you are one strong, unbendable, loud, cranky baby.

This month you’ve started to do a few more things in a “big boy” sort of way, namely, you now have your baths in the tub upstairs (you LOVE to splash; it makes you laugh) and you ride in the stroller without your infant carseat. When you wear your pajamas, you look like such a big kid that I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you were going to head downstairs to make yourself a bowl of cereal and watch Saturday morning cartoons. 

You are trying so hard to crawl, and you’re making progress every day. You either rock on your hands and knees until your little arms give out and you do a face plant, or you stretch yourself out as far as you can and try with all your might to reach for whatever object you’re after. Both of these are usually accompanied by grunts and groans, and I always think it sounds as if you trying to will yourself to move forward. Tonight you made the best progress of all—instead of moving one hand and one knee and then the other, you would move both hands and then both knees. Daddy described it well: he said you look like you were doing the butterfly. No more messing around—we have to babyproof now!

As I’ve told you hundreds of times, fall is Mama’s favorite time of year. You seem to like it too. We had lots of fun at the pumpkin patch (well, the adults did anyway) and playing in the leaves, and the beautiful fall days have allowed us to go for nice long walks. One fall activity you didn’t like (at all) was the hayrack ride with the folks from Daddy’s office—you cried the whole time. We really thought you would like that better than you did.

For your first Halloween, we dressed you up as Chewbacca (by the way, a notable exception to your no-getting-dressed rule: you donned your costume with minimal fuss and even tolerated the fur), and, oh my goodness, the cuteness was almost too much to bear. You were a hit, of course. Mommy and Daddy dressed up too, and we appreciated the fact that you weren’t yet embarrassed by us.

There are dozens and dozens of little things that I want to remember--like the way you have started to give a little giggle after every sneeze (an acceptable alternative to the little “uhhhhnnn” we used to like so well); the (sometimes loud) humming you do when you nurse; that you smile so, so, so big whenever I come around the car to fetch you from your carseat (I love it that you are so ecstatic to see me and hope it will be so for a long, long time); how you like to keep your legs up in the air when we put you down in your crib (and that you, of course, wake up as soon as you relax them); that you like to sleep with your nose pressed up against something, whether the side of your carseat or Mama’s chin; the way you laugh in anticipation when we play “Come a little rusky going beek beek beek beek”; that no matter how upset you are, you can be at least temporarily distracted by making the little orange house on your exersaucer pop up (you have to pat it back down); how you sometimes whisper when you are talking to yourself; and how you “sing along” in church. Just to name a few.

It’s such a joy to be your mom.

Mama loves you, little man.

More pictures of this month here.