9 Months!

Last Monday we woke to a very nice treat. SNOW!! The very first snow for him! It had started the night before after Austin went to sleep. Here he is on Monday morning checking out the snowflakes... There were great big snowflakes falling when he got up. He was fascinated by them. We sat in the front door and watched for a LONG time. We got to do this because I got a snow DELAY on Monday AND Tuesday!!!

I missed an entire week of blogging due to very good reasons. We got new carpet and tile last week in the kitchen, our bedroom, and our bathroom. It was a HECK of a week, but it's done now. Thank goodness...we LOVE it!!! I need to take another pic, this is before it was grouted.

Last Thursday Kamden and I were bell ringers at Wal-Mart. It was a bit chilly, but not tooooo bad. The newspaper even came and took our picture. We were in the paper on Saturday!

On Saturday we took Santa, I mean Austin, for his 9 month pictures! How cute is this Santa!?!

I sure do loooooove this Santa Baby!

Austin is VERY mobile these days! I was cooking dinner and trying to keep him contained the other night. I put him in his Bumbo seat and let him "help" me! He may or may not have helped me clean the brownie batter bowl;)...

Yep, he can pull up now! Big boy!

Tonight he sat in the shopping cart for the first time. It's been quite awhile since I've taken him to the store with me. We had a bad experience awhile back of him spazzing out, me holding him, feeding him, trying to push the cart, check out, and have everyone staring at me like I was beating the kid. Tonight was much more pleasant, he's kicking back in the cart!

He also likes to sit UNDER the jumperoo...

And the 9 month pics...WOW! This was no easy task...

Yes, that's Andrew's iPhone. The only way I could get him to stay on his back was to give him the phone!

Yeah, soooo cooperative...

At least you can see the 9 in this one!

This kid is something else! This is definitely the month that I have seen the most changes. He crawled right before he turned 8 months, but this past month he has REALLY taken off. He sat up right after he turned 8 months. He has been pulling up now for a little over a week. Austin waves and says Bye Bye, Mama, Dada, and Hi. Soooo many milestones so close together. We now have the living room enclosed with baby fences. I know, ha ha. He's really good about just playing in the floor by himself. He usually goes to bed around 8:30. Lately he has been getting up 1 time during the night, and then later gets up around 7:30ish. He'll take a short morning nap and (when he's at home) take a LONG afternoon nap. He does the neatest thing that shocks me like you wouldn't believe. In the afternoon when I KNOW he's tired and ready for a nap, I just go lay him down in his bed. He rolls over (bootie MUST be in the air) and goes to sleep on his own!!!! Doesn't even cry!!! Now that's magical! Sometimes he sings himself to sleep, it's so sweet...

Last night our bath time changed drastically. Before last night we had our routine of laying on the sponge and I washed him, talked, and sang to him. We had a few toys I'd give him and he'd splash them a little. He didn't try to roll over or anything in the tub. Last night he did! He tested it a little with rolling to his side, I told him a firm, "NO." He looked at me and smiled and went the other direction on his side. He quickly was rolled over and crawling in the tub. It was a lot easier before, but this is more fun. He played around so much tonight he even dunked his head on accident! Tonight I put him in the tub on the sponge. He laid there and let me wash him. He kicked back and put his arms behind his head (like stetching out in a Lazy Boy), looked up at me, smiled, and said, "Mama." It was the sweetest thing ever:).