9 1/2 Months

Alexis Grace Edgerton has turned into a little ball of spunk, curiosity, laughter, and delight! We always knew that we would love our kid, but I don't think either of us ever imagined that we would enjoy our kid so much.

First, the stats. She is 27 inches long and 14 pounds, 2 ounces. She's still on the small side, but she's been gaining more weight recently and we changed around some of her eating habits, and she's doing really well. She did get sick for the first time a few weeks ago with ear infections in both ears. She was so sad during that time but is all better now. She appears to be on track developmentally as well.

Now for the fun stuff. She transitioned great into Virginia and did a wonderful job with the "world tour" that we took when we first arrived. A couple of days after we moved we had to take a big trip to IKEA. There was this crazy puppet that she really liked and was inexpensive, so we got it for her. (It feels really good to be able to do little things like that now sometimes...) Anyway, Jason was playing with the puppet with her while she was in the stroller (a new addition to our life which has been WONDERFUL!) and when the puppet went away, she actually looked for it! It was the first time that we really, truly saw her understand the idea of object permanence. Now, she's always looking for things and remembers where things are. For example, we had to move her diaper stacker and simply nail it to the wall because she was she started always going back to it and pulling diapers out.

She's crawls amazingly well now. She's really fast, and if we put her down in her room for one moment without the gate on her door, she's headed out as fast as she can go. ESCAPE!!! It's really funny. She seems really coordinated so far, something she certainly didn't get from me. A lot of times when she's in her nursery she's standing holding on to the couch or holding on to the edge of the plastic tub that has her toys. And, of course, she stands up in her new crib. She LOVES her new bed, except when she wants out, of course. It has so much more room than the pack and play did, and she can crawl all around it and have her toys in it. She's starting to want to walk we think, because she tries to stand on her own occasionally and because when she crawls, she's gotten into the habit of putting her left foot flat on the floor with her knee up, like she's trying to get on her little legs. She loves to pull out the entire contents of her toybox and leave them all over her room, and when she's had enough, she goes to the gate and pulls herself up and cries for us to come get her. It's especially cute when she's in her crib and we walk into the room and she's standing in it. The side facing the door is solid, and she's so tall now that we can see her little eyes peering over at us as we come in, and she gets absolutely delighted.

Speaking of which, Alex is in love with being surprised and being attacked, especially by her daddy. Peek-a-boo is a great game especially when we're hiding around corners and not just under blankts or behind our hands. But she adores it when she's in my arms and Jason will come up and "attack" her! She screams and buries her head into my chest with absolute trust and excitement. Her favorite version of this is actually when he's across the apartment. I don't think either of us has ever seen her as excited as last night. Alex and I were on the bed playing, and Jason came and started to attack her from the other room. Alex saw him coming and bounced up and down on her butt, fell over, and then rolled over a couple of times like she was trying to escape but wanted to be caught. And we did this over and over and over again and she never got bored of it! It was amazing, and she just laughed and laughed. She likes being tossed onto the bed and rolled around like a sack of potatoes. And she loves being on Jason's shoulders; that's the best place in the world!

She is babbling a ton, although she does it in spurts. She was getting really good at both M and D, but then switched completely to D, and last weekend we really think she said "da da" twice, but then she stopped babbling for a couple of days, and this morning she was saying N. Regardless, she's always very vocal and will sometimes have little conversations with people. And she still loves all people. She has a definite preference for us, but she's done really well being in nurseries as we've visited churches, and she's done great with family. And she'll love you especially if you have a necklace, glasses, id tags, or buttons.

And she's weird. Just this morning she started taking her leg and sticking it on top of the feeding tray of her high chair, another thing it's great to have! She can always be amused with a sock, and it doesn't matter if it's a big person sock or a little person sock. She loves them all indiscriminately. What else does she love? Her bath time. She got a little inflatable tub to stick int eh bathtub, and she has some toys, and she has the most fun. We have to take her out because she starts to get pruney. She loves eating crackers, biter biscuits, cheerios, and especially these little Gerber puffed stars that we buy. She also loves muenster cheese, although recently she's been playing with it more than eating it. I think she's fascinated with the texture.

Alex is just an incredibly happy kid, and we feel so blessed for that. She's healthy, curious, high-spirited, and a joy to be around, even though she drools an awful lot.