mohaus: Isaac is Nine Months Old

A couple of days late... sorry kid, you're the second!

Currently Isaac is scooting backwards, but still not crawling forward. This gets him in trouble as he scoots himself under the couch and then gets frustrated. He easily moves from a seated position to all fours, but hasn't mastered pushing forward yet. Really, he just wants to stand...

It seems that he is determined to stand and cruise before crawling forward. Every time we hold him, he turns around and slides off of our laps onto the floor and holds the side of the couch. He really wants to start cruising, but hasn't figured out how to move his feet.

On the sleep front, I thought that we had finally turned a corner when he slept 9 hours straight at night, two nights in a row. But now that he is moving, he is in a regression stage. The problem is that he wakes up, scoots himself into a corner of his crib and then can't figure out how to move forward again. I know this is just a phase, but it is so hard to be losing sleep.

This past month he suddenly figured out how to eat solid foods. We do baby lead weaning and have introduced really soft solids all along, but during the last month he just seemed to get it. And he LOVES food. We just give him small bites of everything we eat and he devours it.

I briefly tried baby food (just to see if the convenience might help when we are away from home) but he makes the most hilarious faces and seems to hate it (who wouldn't when you have had real food) and his diapers are basically blow outs every time I try pureed baby food. If we weren't sure before, we are now, solids are the way to go for our family.

Isaac is at a stage where he loves to make spitting noise with his mouth. His Grandma Esther says the Spanish phrase for this is "trompeta" or to trumpet. I don't think there is an English equivalent, but it is a perfect phrase. Also, like his big brother at this age, his tongue is almost always sticking out.

In addition to spitting sounds, Isaac is babbling up a storm. He seems very determined to talk. His main sound continues to be "dada." But one day Daniel came home from work and Isaac was in his high chair and he said as clear as day, "Hi." We're not sure if he meant to say that, but it was pretty clear to both of us and a vast majority of the sounds he makes are of the "da" variety.

According to Daniel, Isaac's individual development plan (IDP in work language) is to walk, talk and eat us out of house and home.

Like most little ones Isaac loves cords, cell phones and remotes. He seems to be moving past the phase of just putting them in his mouth to an actual curiosity of how they function. When I try to hide said items, he no longer accepts that they have "disappeared" instead he hunts until he finds them.

In the past month, his list of firsts include: first trip to the mountains, first Christmas, first New Year, and first bath in the big tub with his older brother.