I can’t believe it’s been nine months!

Time, you’ll find out, seems to go by so much faster as I get older. I don’t know why, probably because of you, but I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

I remember when I was 8 years old waiting downstairs in our family room for Randy Conklin’s mom to come pick me up in their minivan for a birthday party and a movie. We had this faux-wood analog clock that sat on a shelf above the piano and she was supposed to be arriving sometime around 1:00PM.

I recall the time being 9 something in the morning. I’m not sure why, but I thought time would go faster perhaps, by staring out the window. Anyways, it didn’t. It seemed like forever before it was 1:00PM, and the funniest thing about this memory? I can recall all this, but I have no idea what movie we saw that day.

Anyhow – you’re nine months old!

Your mom and I thought you would maybe skip crawling and go right to walking, but you proved us wrong. I’m not sure what you’re doing is exactly “crawling”, more of a knee-lift and drag the other leg, but you’re definitely mobile now and it’s completely ruined whatever sort of routine I thought I had going with you. I used to be able to sit you on the floor in the living room, content with a couple of toys, and do the dishes or laundry, etc. You would babble and drool and roll your O-ball around or knock your colored shape blocks together in some Aidan-themed tempo.

You still babble, drool and knock your blocks, but you also have developed some sort of strong attraction to cords. My laptop cord especially. Kudos to Apple for designing the magnetic power cord, it’s probably saved you a couple of times from pulling the laptop off the couch and onto your head!

So yeah, you’re moving around and you’re also pulling yourself up to standing, which is so fun to watch while you’re negotiating your plan of attack. A couple of days ago I had to call your mom into the bedroom to watch as you sat on the end of our bed, thinking about how you could stand by using the top of the chest which sits at the foot of the bed. The edge you wanted to grab was about 8 or so inches out of your reach and you determined this by reaching out with an arm and flopping over until your whole torso was flat on the bed, and your outstretched hand grasped a fistful of blanket. You inched a little closer and flopped over again, this time overshooting it as your head bonked lightly onto the back-end of the chest. Unfazed, you slid your hands up the back of the chest, reaching in vain for the top, until one of them found a small edge. Your tiny little fingers hooked onto this giving you enough momentum to simultaneously pull yourself up while swinging your other arm over the top of your head and hooking the top of the chest. Then you brought the other hand up and finished, victorious and proud I may add, pulling yourself up to standing while looking first at your mom and then to me, breathing heavy, smiling and drooling.

You’ve also started swimming lessons! The instructor said it would be 3 or 4 classes before he would do any submersion with you, but you he observed just how comfortable you were in the water and asked me if I thought it would be ok to try and I said, “sure”. You did amazing! I don’t want to go into the whole “torpedo” drill as it’s called, because it makes me nervous each time you go under water, but you’ve done it now at every class along with back floats, wall crawls and “humpty-dumpty” drills. You don’t like all of the exercises, but learning water safety and how to swim at such a young age will be helpful when you’re older. Shoot, you’re already a better swimmer than your dad!

You have the following vocabulary, although I should preface this by saying I’m not sure you completely understand what the words mean:

  • “Mahmahmah” – (Mommy)
  • “Dahdahdah” – (Daddy)
  • “Ghee” – (doggie)
  • “Ghee-eh” – (kitty cat)
  • “Hi”

I’ve been told you’ve also said, “hot” as well as “Aidan” and maybe a couple of other words, but that list is what I pretty much hear you saying on a daily basis. You also have your own eloquent language, known only to you, which involves several different tones of rubbery, buzz-like “lip rolls”, these same “rolls” but using your fingers to move your lips and grunts, sighs and giggles in all varieties.

You’re eating from quite a menu these days, thanks to your mom. She has made you everything from sweet potatoes to beef, apple, chicken, squash, yogurt, banana, pear and peaches. Everything is still pureed, but we’re trying to introduce chunkier pieces gradually.

That being said, you will have your 9 month appointments this month with all of your doctors. Your mom and I don’t have any real concerns, probably just typical parent questions, and I’m sure the doctors will be just as amazed as we are with how far you’ve come!