9 Months!

Its true!  Bennett is 9 months old TODAY!  What an amazing milestone.  When I held Bennett as a newborn, nine months seemed so far away...so old...so grown up.  Here we are!  There is a part of me that is not ready for Bennett to be just three short months away from his first birthday.  I feel like the days pass so quickly without the time to really soak in all of his growing and changing.  I certainly do my best, but maybe I would fall short no matter what.  I know it will be a while until we have another small baby in this house, so I cherish Bennett's "babyness" so much!

Bennett is mesmerized by John's toothbrush, so John always lets B help him!

While I may feel that he's growing up too fast, I am joyful that is is healthy and strong.  Bennett is perfect.  He's a perfect little boy who smiles all the time, has an adorable contagious giggle, and loves to talk!  Bennett favorite sound right now is "Ma".  I like to think he is saying "Mama", but I know he hasn't deciphered that yet.  Bennett eats babyfood and just in the last week has really started to enjoy it and want more, more, more!  His favorites are bananas, sweet potatoes, and squash.  We play with a sippy cup of water, but he doesn't seem to care much about drinking anything out of it.

Bennett started crawling two weeks ago and prefers to "army crawl", pulling himself along with his arms.  He does like to get up on his knees, but doesn't really crawl on all fours yet.  He also shows a lot of interest in pulling himself up, but hasn't quite got the strength to do it yet.  Bennett's mobility has started to cause some trouble with sharing toys, but I know its just the beginning.  We have lots of lessons to learn in this house!  However, Bennett and Logan still do have a great bond and love playing together (sometimes).  Logan can make Bennett laugh harder than anyone else - that is so fun to see!

Finally, around 7 months, I got Bennett on a better schedule of two naps (one short morning nap around 10 am and one long afternoon nap around 1 pm) and a decent bedtime of 7:30 pm.  Life has been much better since I decided to be disciplined enough to give Bennett a better routine.  He has even started sleeping through the night again!  Yahoo!

Bennett has 8 teeth - all four front top and bottom teeth were in by 8 months (just like his big brother!).  He is working on getting his eye teeth now.  Those teeth are really painful, I can remember from Logan's teething days.  I think they take a long time to come in, too...hopefully it won't be too eventful.

I got to spend some special time with Bennett today because John took Logan on a road trip for the afternoon/evening to see Eau Claire Memorial High School play in the state hockey tournament.  Bennett and I ran a couple errands, looked at lots of books, had a nap, and even played with Logan's train (shhhh...don't tell Logan!) that Bennett has been dying to touch.  What a blessing our little boys are!  I'll update on Monday after Bennett's 9 month appointment with our pediatrician - can't wait to see those stats!

Here's Bennett and I just hanging out, doing some chores around the house while B enjoys his Baby Mum-mum cracker!  I've been using my sling quite a bit again.  Bennett is a cuddler, so he likes to be snuggled in the sling better than in the Baby Bjorn.  So fun!

Have a happy weekend!