Nine Months Old

Today Ace turns nine months old. He is the ever growing boy. He's changed so much just this month and he's getting bigger and stronger.

New events in Ace's ninth month of life: free standing, going underwater, long car trips, 2 new teeth, and his first 5k and solid food again!

Yes Ace is days away from walking. Today he took a half step, as in he lifted one foot up and moved it forward... then slowly lowered himself back into the good ol' safe position of crawling. He's a speedy crawler today. In fact, we've added another gate to our baby proofed pin living room because he previously got around the barrier (which you can see here in the last picture) and climbed ALL of our stairs (9 of them) to come see me. Yikes! So another gate was purchased and the ottoman barrier retired. He did look so proud that he had climbed all the stairs to come see me though and after the panic subsided, I was too.

Ace has been thoroughly enjoy his swimming lessons and during his ninth month of life has learned to dip under the water. He enjoys any chance to get in the water. Whether it be in class, during free swim with mom AND dad, or in the backyard in the tiny pool we purchased for him. The only constant is that it must be a nice 86' or higher or he says forget it! We tried a little colder water once in his pool in the backyard and he jumped out of that faster than you could bat your eyes. Yes, we boil water on the stove to provide him with adequate temperatures and no I don't think that's too excessive. He's barely 9 months old! I mean he gets some luxuries - if I'm still doing it at 2... feel free to scoff. ;-)

We have also seen the reintroduction of solid food into little man's diet. Yes we started right at five months, that lasted for 3 weeks. Then he got sick and wouldn't touch the stuff to save his life. So after struggling with it for a few weeks, I stopped entirely for the month of April. I waited until May rolled around and started again and yay!!! He's slowly participating and consuming the solid food. He eats about a 1/3rd of a jar in a sitting and does that 2 times a day and occasionally a third time. He's primarily still relying on milk, but he has also started to be interested in the bottle again! Woohoo. So progress is being made in our little guy's eating habits. So far his favorites are bananas and this last week we introduced some protein into his diet and he's been mildly interested in that. Two more teeth have made their appearance now, they can be seen here.

Other adventures for Ace include socializing with his friend Jon Jon (10 days younger than him) and also with his friend since birth, Sabria. He's been enjoying starting to play with the other kids and even in swim lessons is very fascinated with the other kids in his class.

It's truly hard to believe that we are so close to Ace turning one year. I know I still have three months until then - but the last three have flown by and so I know that late summer is just around the corner. My little baby is growing up, but he's quite the looker and he's a joy to spend every day with watching him discover and learn new things.

To look back at the last 9 month posts click on milestones and you can watch him grow from one month all the way till now. But enjoy the below pictures from some of my wiggle worms outtakes. :)