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As promised, here’s some pictures from our trip downstate for Greg’s brother’s deployment for Iraq. We had a fun time and so did everyone seeing how much Miles has grown!

I know I say this every month, but I can’t believe our baby is 9 months old already! Where has the time gone? Here are Miles’ unofficial stats:

- Weight: 21.5 lb. (50-75%)
- Length: 28″ (25-50%)
- Head: 18.5″ (90%)

He was moving around so much while I was trying to get his measurements, so I’m not really sure if these are right, but close enough. He’ll go for his 9-month appointment and shots in 3 weeks. Because of six-month shots being postponed for a week, it’s thrown off his entire shots schedule. So now he’ll be a few days away from 10 months at his 9 month appointment. Oh, well.

Miles has been doing so much lately. He’s not crawling yet, but it seems like he’s just days away. He’ll get up to his hands and knees and then reach forward and belly flop. He also has started clapping, waving, kissing (more people than just me), banging toys together to make noise, pounding his hands on things like a drum, lifting his arms up when he wants to be lifted, and just being ridiculously silly, to name a few things. He also loves to talk. He jabbers and talks all the time. The only time he’s quiet is if he’s really tired or has just woken up.

When he’s tired, Miles will laugh and laugh and laugh at the goofiest things. Sometimes when he’s like that, he’ll laugh at nothing, which makes us laugh, which makes him laugh harder. Oh, and last week, we were outside when Greg tripped on a rock and almost fell. Miles thought it was hilarious and laughed huge belly laughs. So of course Greg kept pretending to trip and Miles loved it. A few days ago, the three of us were trying to take a nap. I had my eyes closed and was nearly asleep when I felt a tiny little finger reach into my open mouth and poke my tooth. I ignored him, hoping he’d go to sleep, when he leaned over and kissed me. I opened one eye to look at him and he laughed at me. I ended up having to pin his legs between mine so he would settle down and nap.

A few weeks ago, he cut his top four teeth, though one of the front ones isn’t in as far as the others yet. While he was teething, he didn’t want to eat much solid food, but now he’s been eating more. He’s not a big fan of pureed baby food and would much rather feed himself, so he eats some baby puffs (the sweet potato ones are his favorite), graham crackers, and tonight he had some of my grilled chicken. That is, until he choked on a piece and threw up all over his highchair tray.

It just seems like he’s doing something new every day. He’s started pulling himself up to standing when you try to help him sit up when he’s lying down, and he’ll walk a bit holding onto your hands. I wonder if he’ll skip crawling completely? He doesn’t like his jumper or exersaucer as much anymore because they don’t let him move around. He would much rather be rolling across the floor, grabbing at toys or trying to get at things that he’s not supposed to have.

We are having so much fun watching him learn new things and try new things. Though I feel mixed feelings about the speed that he does this, because I don’t want my little baby to grow up so fast! I love seeing his face light up and the big smiles he gives me when he sees me and I know that before too long he’ll be running all over!

Below are some pictures of him and Percy from tonight:

Sorry for falling behind with updating, but we’ve actually been pretty busy lately. We just returned from Greg’s parent’s house. We were there almost a week visiting with his family and had a great time. We took some photos and will post them shortly. Also, today Miles is 9 months old! So hopefully we can get his measurements posted and his picture with “Percy the Penguin.”

A few weekends ago, we headed to Menominee for Leah’s cousin’s graduation party. Here’s a pic with Miles meeting his cousin Emma.

Graduation Party, June 12th

Emma, Grandpa Russ and Miles

Below are a few pics from Memorial Day weekend in Nahma (almost a month old already).

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

Touching the water for the first time

So here are our totally unofficial measurements for Miles at 8 months:

- Length: 27.5″ (25-50th percentile)
- Weight: 20 lb. (25-50th percentile)
- Head: 18.25″ (75-90th percentile)

Does Miles really have such a big head? Maybe I’m just used to it, but it seems fine to me. I need to find another 8-month-old so we can compare.

Oh, and another thing. If Miles is in the 25-50th range for both height and weight and he’s only 8 months old, why is the 9 month clothing getting too small? Shouldn’t they make the clothes to fit at least the 50th percentiles at 9 months? It makes no sense. And Gerber’s onesies are the worst. He’s currently wearing 18- and 24-month sizes of the Gerber onesies. What the heck? Ok, rant over.

So, what has Miles been up to in the last month? A lot. And most of it involves MOVING. He is now sitting up all by himself and will put a hand out to stop himself if he starts to tip to the side. If he tips backwards, though, he just tips. He’s usually on his thick blanket when he’s sitting by himself, so it doesn’t hurt if he tips backwards.

He’s also rolling and scooting all over the place. It’s funny to watch him try to get something by rolling, turning around, pushing himself with his feet and wiggling over to it. He’s getting pretty good at it. He still isn’t showing any interest in trying to crawl, though he will push up with his arms and then push himself forward a bit with his toes.

Oh, and I can tell we’ll have to baby-proof the house soon. He rolled/wormed over to a shelf I have with figurines and tried to grab one of them. I found some baby gates that have a cat door in them so that we can block off the area where the litter box is.

His two bottom teeth are probably about 1/3 of the way in now. I still can’t believe they came in two days apart. And he started cutting one of his upper teeth that is next to the two front ones. Part of it came down and you could see this little white dot in his gum, and now it’s gone, but the little hole where it was is still there. Maybe it will come back later?

On the food front, he’s eating only so-so of the solid food. He’d still much rather nurse (and it was a short nursing strike, thank goodness, around the time of his teething), though he’s trying some new foods. It seems like he would much rather feed himself, and now that he’s 8 months, he should start developing techniques to enable him to feed himself finger foods, so hopefully he’ll enjoy that much more. We’re still making our own baby food (www.wholesomebabyfood.com is a great resource if you want to do this), and now he can start eating some spices (cinnamon, ginger, basil, stuff like that) and some different foods. Yesterday I bought blueberries, watermelon and a kiwi to try with him.

He tries to grab things off of your plate, too, if you leave it too close. He also wants to drink out of your glass because he doesn’t seem to like his sippy cup so we’ve been giving him sips of water out of a regular glass. So now you can’t drink when you’re holding him because he tries to swat/grab it out of your hand.

He’s talking so, so much lately. Babababa, dadadada, hadaba, and squeals and loud yells. It’s so cute! Last weekend in church was our first time moving to the baby room because he was talking so loud.

He’s not really into his books as much lately because reading requires sitting still and he is so not about that. He does seem to have two favorite books, one called Count that is just simple (“Blue bird, blue bird, what do you see? I see 1 (2, 3, 4, 5) bird up in a tree.”) and he loves for you to read it 5 times in a row. The other is Baby Faces and he just loves to look at those babies. He smiles at them as if they’re actual people.

Bedtime is another thing that he is not enjoying lately. When you put him in his crib, he cries like his tiny little heart is just broken and I can’t STAND it. So, though I know they tell you not to do this, I lie down with him on our bed until he falls asleep and then move him to his crib. He’ll sleep there until 7:00 in the morning just fine, so I’m ok with doing things this way for now. I’m pretty sure this is just a separation anxiety thing that he’ll hopefully grow out of soon.

One really cute thing we’ve noticed lately is that he likes to flirt with pretty girls. At the grocery store and restaurants, he’ll stare at a pretty girl until she smiles at him and then he’ll give her a big smile back. Guys get totally ignored. It’s funny because it’s not even girls in general that he does this with, it’s always pretty girls. Though he’s not picky about blondes vs. brunettes.

It’s so much fun to see him grow into his personality and he’s such a wonderful baby. It’s so amazing how much he changes in just a month!

And instead of just one picture of him and Percy, here are three, just so you can get an idea of how difficult it’s getting to take these pictures!

Here’s the entire series of monthly photos with Percy.

Henry and Josie recently celebrated their first birthday! Well, there wasn’t really a celebration, but they were born approximately a year ago. And we’ve really ignored our fur babies on here since Miles was born, so I thought I’d do a quick post about them.

If you were to ask Josie, she’d tell you how we starve her. We never give her food and when she cries because the hunger pains hurt her tiny belly, we just ignore her. See? See how her ribs stick out? Seriously, this is how she acts. She is still compensating for being the runt of the litter and is now much pudgier than Henry.

What do you think these items have in common?

Give up? These are all things that Josie has stolen. She is a klepto. All of these things we have found in her mouth at one time or another. I was playing on the floor with Miles one day when she walked by us and I noticed something shiny in her mouth. I took it out and, yup, it was a quarter. Then another time she stole Greg’s camera memory card and walked off with it. We got it away before she could get too far. She has carried away batteries and pens quite a few times. At 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, I could hear her out in the hallway. She had a bracelet.

“See how sweet I am? Don’t believe these lies.”

And the fact that she can’t jump hasn’t stopped her. She’s somehow coerced Henry into being her accomplice. He’ll knock things off of the counters for her. Henry, who we call Spidercat, can jump crazy high. And there is no door jamb he won’t scale.

For some reason, the early morning makes them go INSANE. I don’t know if they’re like Birdman, where they get their power from the sun, and they lose their power over the dark night, but I had hoped they’d grow out of it as they got older. No such luck. They play “bet you can’t get me!” around and around and around the center of the house at 5:30 in the morning. It wakes Miles up at least two or three mornings a week.

“We have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about.”

Miles laughs at them and tries to pet them whenever they walk near him. Fortunately they don’t seem to care that he pulls their tails and yanks out hunks of fur.

As I’m writing this, Josie just walked past me with one of Miles’ blocks in her mouth. She’s batting it around and laying on top of it. I can’t even imagine how weird and calm our life would be without them!