9 months old!

I am not sure if I am ready for it! I can't believe Eli is 9 months old already. He is such a fun smiley boy, and is so cute! He has his moments of being so good and easy and laid back and we think "wow, you are such a good easy baby". Then he switches into a non-sleeping crying opinionated little thing, and we think "oh yeah, we forgot about this side of you for a minute"! But the older he gets the more laid back he gets. I also think that is being sick the past few weeks has also contributed to his fussiness and his lack of sleep in the night time. So we are praying that that changes soon, and that he gets better.

He is really into playing with his toys right now and loves to sit in his excisaucer and play with those toys or just sit on the floor (yes, he is finally sitting on his own now) and play with other toys. He is also in the stage of making lots of noise with his toys so everything he does in loud! Eli has also started really sitting up on his own in the last month, he tips over occasionally, but is pretty solid. That was something he was on the verge of for quite awhile and finally mastered it. He still has a bit of trouble rolling over from his stomach to his back, but that is coming along well. He can roll from his back to his stomach, but doesn't do it often because he hates it and can't get back over. I know once it clicks for him he will be rolling all over the place though. And then the crawling will come too! He has also started figuring out standing up and will lean on me or a chair and stand up. He enjoys it but is wobbly a bit and hasn't started cruising yet.

Eli still loves people and is never lacking a huge smile when he sees people or someone comes to say hi to him. He still especially loves his big brother and they just crack up together. Sometimes I think Caleb gets a little rough with him and can scare him, but for the most part they can be trusted together. Eli also is very ticklish and just cracks up if you barely touch his feet or his sides, it's so cute. He also loves to hang upside down! He's almost always flipping upside down when we are holding him and when we bring him up he is smiling away. His favorite book right now is about a monkey hanging upside down, and I wonder if there is a corelation! Speaking of books, he is not the avid reader that Caleb was at this age, but he is starting to gradually gain a love of books and doesn't just try to eat them now. He will actually sit and listen to a story in its entirety, which is good. We read a lot of books together, so I was worried that he wasn't going to be a book lover... I wasn't sure how to handle that! It's what Caleb and I do ALL the time!

Eli is also eating more and more solid foods. We had a bit of a regression the past few weeks because of this cold he has. He was having some crazy drainage and every time he ate anything he would just throw it up, so I did stop giving him solids for a few meals since those seemed to be the worse for him and he would gag at any little texture change. But the past few days he is doing better. He is mostly eating baby food of carrots, sweet potatoes peas, spinach (the veggies for dinner). Then fruit for breakfast. With cereal at both meals. I can tell he is going to be pickier than Caleb as he isn't a fan of most veggies, and doesn't like oatmeal cereal. He gags whenever something is a different texture than perfectly smooth. So it's annoying as I have been trying to make things a bit more lumpier for him, and it never goes over well! He also likes the baby mum mum crackers for a treat. He has his two bottom teeth and one large top tooth and one just poking through. He got the two top teeth in the past month (October 19^th and 23^rd to be exact).

That's all I can think of for an update on Eli right now!