9 Months Old

Christine will be 10 months old in three days, but don't worry these pictures were taken when she was barely 9 months old.

Every month I try to take pictures of Christine on our bed. This task is getting more difficult now that she is so mobile.

I had to resort to bribing with "star snacks" (Gerber puffs).

At Christine's 9 month appointment she weighed 16 pounds, 12 ounces and measured 28 inches long. She is in the 60th percentile for height and 10th percentile for weight. The doctor was slightly concerned with her weight but it was the first week we began switching to formula. Now that she drinks formula she isn't limited to mom's supply and eats much more, so hopefully she'll stay in a healthy weight rage (I'm not worried).

Christine's favorite activity is playing with my make-up. Her old toys are "baby toys" and distract her for about 3 seconds, whereas mommy's makeup can distract her for at least 30 minutes. Her favorite item is my eye liner. She figured out how to pull the lid off the pencil in about 2 minutes. Once she learned how to get the lid off the eye liner she figured out how to pull the lids off of pens. She is so smart, I have to keep my eye on her!

She pulls herself to standing on anything she can reach and cruises around the furniture. She crawls everywhere and likes to haul her toys with her around the house. Every night I have to pick up so many toys/tupperware/plasticware/makeup (whatever is in Christine's grasp) that are scattered all around the house.
She still loves her books. We keep her books on the bottom two shelves of her bookshelf, and she LOVES to pull them all out. Every day I have to pick up all of her books off the floor and put them back. Her favorite books right now are the Green Eggs and Ham flap book, Going on a Bear Hunt, and Sheep in a Jeep.

We've introduced lots of new foods in the last month: real peas, shredded chicken, and Cheerios. Cheerios are definitely the all-time favorite (and great for when we are on-the-go).

Just look at that face! Her smiles make all the clean-up time worth it! (For the record, Jeff was the one feeding her, not me)

Happy Birthday Jeff!

Poor Jeff. This was probably the lamest birthday he's ever had. I had mastitis starting the week before his birthday. Of course I was planning to do all my shopping for Jeff that week (I have learned my lesson, shop well in advance for birthdays). So there were hardly any presents, and I didn't have any energy so we had a very small celebration, no fancy birthday breakfast or elaborate dinner or even a birthday cake. This was truly a test of how much Jeff loves me.

If you were wondering about the white poms and raindrops, they are decorations for a baby shower I threw just a few days after Jeff's birthday.

I had to use bags I already had on hand to wrap his presents, so that meant pink girly ones. Notice the large white bag, inside the present is wrapped in one of Christine's blankets!

Christine loved all the wrapping paper. We had to put her in her jumper to keep her from eating all the tissue paper.

I did make up for the lame birthday by doing daily surprises the week after his birthday. Every day when I picked him up from school there would be a present on his seat.

We celebrated again in Kingwood with pie and Jeff finally got to blow out some candles!

Standing Adventures

Swimming

This little girl loves to swim!

She likes to kick her feet and splash around.

She has so much fun in her floaty

She especially likes playing with her Daddy in the water.

June

Wow! I did not post once in the month of June. Mostly it is because our laptop died. Our main computer is in Christine's room and I can't use the computer while Christine is napping or I wake her up, same with at night once she has gone to bed, and those are the only times that I can get on the computer.

I did take lots of pictures throughout the month so there will be lots of posts coming soon. But here's a quick update for everyone wondering how we are doing.

Christine is 9 months now! and very good at standing. She can stand independently for about 30 seconds. She side steps while holding onto the coffee table and couch, but hasn't taken any first steps yet. I'm predicting she'll start walking by the end of July. (My kitchen usually looks like this now. All the tupperware on the floor make the best toys and keep her occupied while I do the dishes).

I got Mastitis AGAIN! (for the fourth time). Mastitis wipes me out, and steals about a week of my life. The timing couldn't have been worse. I got sick right before Jeff's birthday so his day wasn't very special, but we did have a week-long celebration afterwards, with daily presents to make up for it. Speaking of presents, I got Jeff a video camera! So hopefully I can learn how to upload videos to the blog so everyone can see little clips of Christine crawling, standing, jumping, and laughing.

After the last bought of Mastitis I decided I was done breast feeding. So I started switching Christine over to formula. It took a couple days to get her used to a bottle and the taste of formula, but then she decided that bottles are WAY better. Bottles make my life much easier.

We've started visiting the pool everyday. Christine LOVES the water.

We had a visit from Mark and Dana (Mark is Jeff's brother) and Christine got to meet her "twin cousin."

Jeff finished up his rotation at Psychiatry. It was not his favorite rotation... he definitely will not become a Psychiatrist, but he did get some really good stories. He is on a two-week summer break right now and will start Pediatrics at the beginning of July.