9 Months

Today Eli is 39 weeks and 2 days old.  No, I don't actually keep track of his age by weeks anymore, but one of the many baby newsletters I get in my email every week does.  So I happen to know that today marks the day that Eli has been growing outside of me as long as he grew inside me (according to the doctors).  I, for one, find that amazing!  I still look at him sometimes and am completely amazed that he is actually mine.  Sometimes I feel like I need to pinch myself.

He weighs 21.8 lbs and now has 4 teeth on bottom and 3 up top.  And tooth #8 is on it's way, just not through the surface yet.

He tries to pull up on everything and gets very frustrated when he can't get a grip on things like the wall, doors and other vertical surfaces.

He can sit himself up now.  A couple of nights ago I put him to bed and he would not go to sleep.  He kept crying no matter how many times I tried to soothe him so finally I decided he could just cry for a little while.  It breaks my heart to do it, but when he gets too tired, there's just no other way.  This particular night he was fighting sleep so hard and Doug and I sat and watched him on our monitor.  He sat up in his crib and tried to prop himself up against the railing, almost like he thought if he could just stay sitting up he wouldn't fall asleep. He bobbed and weaved for quite a while before he finally fell asleep completely bent in half at the hips.  I did go in and lay him flat before we went to sleep :)

Now that he is standing, he loves to dance to music, he even does this thing that looks like he is tapping his foot sometimes.  It is so funny to watch him.

He loves our dogs and they do well with him.  They will go lay down somewhere and he will crawl to them and sit up and try to pet them.  Callie usually gives him her belly, which isn't too smart on her part since that's where the longest fur is, but we haven't had any hair pulling problems yet and I hope we won't.  I always sit with him when he heads for the dogs and I constantly remind him to be easy and not grab.  He has grabbed her hair before but I tell him no and he always lets go without pulling.  Last night he wanted to play with the dogs so bad but every time he got close Callie would move away and Bella would try to lick him.  He thinks it's funny when they lick his fingers but I don't like them to do it so I kept pushing Bella away.   Every time I would push her away he would get upset because he wanted to play so finally I grabbed Bella's collar and turned her back to him so he could pet her back.  He leaned right over and hugged her!  It was adorable and I wish I could have gotten a picture.

Oh how the time has flown.  Only 3 months to go before we're celebrating his first birthday!