Nine Months

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Here's Miss Shannon at nine months. Our trip to the doctor's office this week had Shannon at 29 inches tall and weighing 22 pounds. And as you can see in the photo, the elephant is starting to look puny. Maybe we should start taking these monthly shots with Spike...

News at nine months... Everything about her cracks me up. We'll start with the obvious.

The girl can make some SILLY faces and some really funny sounds. She's recently learned how to growl. But the biggest noise news is that she is saying Mama! She also says Blah blah and on rare occasions, Bob. Poor Dada is waiting patiently for his turn.

She is sooooo close to crawling. Two days ago, it seemed like she made up her mind that she wanted to do it. She puts herself through a football-conditioning-like regimen to train herself... barrel rolls left! barrel rolls right! push up! on your knees! butt up! rolls again! pivot! push backwards!

She's all about exploring these days and everything goes into her mouth. Speaking of her mouth, she's got teeth! 4 of them. The bottom two came through just after she turned 8 months and the top ones followed the next week.

Here's another funny thing: her class picture. The legendary Michael Flanigan is smack dab in the center.

Still eating like a champ and is doing well with finger foods. The dogs are big fans of "self-feeding" because it inevitably results in some tasty morsels that end up on the floor.

She's into:
--Books. Dear Zoo, Goodnight Gorilla and Peekaboo! are bedtime favorites. It's so cool that she will snuggle in and listen to the story now.

--Making music. Especially banging on a shiny mixing bowl.

--Running with Dad. We got a jogging stroller this spring and they have started logging miles together.

--Animals. She lights up when she sees the dogs and we've noticed her noticing things like squirrels and birds. And, we bought a zoo membership so we plan on spending lots of time hanging out there this year.

Okay, time to wrap this post up. Here's one last funny one. I had my camera with me as she was waking up from a car nap.