9 months old

Dear Benny,

You turned 9 months old today. You are quite an ambitious little guy for someone so young! You have been crawling for about a month, and can get around as fast as any of us can walk. You love it when someone holds your hands, because then you can walk and run instead of crawl. You are getting pretty good at pulling up on anything that will hold still, and at balancing yourself, so it won't be long before you are walking and running without Mama's help.

Yesterday you taught yourself how to slide down off the couch onto the floor. This morning you climbed up the two steps to Mama and Daddy's bedroom with no trouble at all, even though it was your first time attempting it.

You have two teeth on the bottom, one just poking through the top, and two more close behind it. You refuse to eat baby food or anything off a spoon. If you can't pick it up with your hands and feed it to yourself, you don't want it. You usually eat Cheerios, but lately seem to really like Rudi's raisin bread.

You weigh about twenty pounds. You say "Mama," "Dada," "Katie," "bubba," "bye-bye," "bah," (ball) and "nint" (basement - your favorite place to be) on a regular basis. Your eyes are still an amazing shade of blue, and I am hoping they won't change like your brother's and sister's did about this age. You no longer have much interest in your baby toys - now you want whatever toys Sammy and Katie are playing with, especially Little People and trains/tracks. You are starting to notice their videos on the TV and will watch them with some interest, especially if you can do it from Mom's lap.

You are quite an amazing little guy, trying very hard to be big instead of little. We love you, B!