Béla is 9 months old!!!

A short update about our boy - he turned 9 months old on Sunday!!! Here he is, walking across the room last night, something he can do incredibly well now.

Yup, after three weeks of practice, he can not only walk better, but he can stand up directly from the ground (without pulling up on anything), can walk while clapping, can walk over rough terrain (i.e. his activity mat, toys), can bend down from standing and pick up something (like a book) that's lying on the ground and stand back up, and can effortlessly drop from walking to crawling without missing a step. While crawling he can navigate over our legs and over pillows without any trouble now, and it's amazing to see how strong his arms are. And while we don't have any stairs, he gets to practice crawling in and out of his "castle", the playpen seen here, which he doesn't really like when it's closed, but loves when it's open.
Here he is with his new ball, which he can already palm. (It seems that rather than growing into his giant hands and feet, they're growing right along with him. In fact, he's already outgrown the Robeez that Karen got him when we left Canada just a month ago, which were already size 12-18 months. Maybe that's why he's so good at walking - it's easy to balance on feet that big!)

Ah yes, his first mouthful of dirt, which he seemed to quite enjoy. He fell asleep while we were coming home from shopping on Saturday afternoon, and we didn't want to wake him, so we thought we'd look for a nearby patio on which we could have a drink while he slept in the stroller. After we were let down by no less than four nearby bars (one was closed because the owners were on holiday, one was closed for a private event, one is apparently always closed on Saturdays, and one just didn't bother putting out their patio furniture on a sunny Saturday afternoon), we gave up and carried the stroller into our apartment and had a beer on our own balcony. Then he woke up and came out to hang out with us, and while we were being incredibly careful about keeping him away from the edges, he got a good handful of soil from our basil plant in his mouth. He didn't seem to mind it much though!
And while he doesn't have another doctor's appointment scheduled until July or August, we'll give you his stats based on measurement with our bathroom scale and a measuring tape.
Height: 74.5 cm, or 29.3 inches
Weight: 11.1 kg, or 24.3 pounds,

For those of you unfamiliar with baby stats, this means that he's giant. And not just heavy, also tall. Around the 90th percentile for both height and weight, in fact. But at least he's a healthy weight for his height!

In other, non-gross-motor skills, he's doing pretty well too. He's had the pincer grasp mastered for a while (I think any baby who feeds himself figures this one out early), and he can both clap and wave bye-bye (this latter one is brand new). He says "papa" to Jeremi (though sometimes it's "papapa"), and "mama" when he's really desperate for milk (which is sort of like calling for me). He's come close to saying "cat" when we talk about Aeris ("ka, ka"), and he has very clearly said "duckie" when we're lying in bed in the morning looking at the mobile, which we always refer to as the "duckies". He loves the mobile, and will point at it and grunt until we spin it, which makes him deliriously happy, at which point he says "duh-duh-duh..." and occasionally "duckie". What's sort of heartbreaking though is that if we say the word "duckie" in any other context (i.e. with a rubber duckie in the bathtub, while reading a book, while bragging about our baby who can say "duckie"), he looks at the ceiling in whatever room we're in, to look for the duckies. He also has six teeth now, two on the bottom and four on the top.  And one other cute thing that he's picked up over the past two weeks is squeezing his eyes shut before he either eats something (food or while nursing) or when he gets really excited while playing.  It's like he's overcome with anticipation, and he just has to shut his eyes.

Now for things he can't do: He loves to knock down towers of bricks or stacking cups, and to tip out buckets full of bricks, but hasn't even made the slightest effort at making his own stacks or putting anything back in the bucket. We've tried to get him to give us five, and he loves it when we hold his hand and make him do it (it gets a laugh every time), but he completely doesn't get that he could, of his own free will, hold his hand up for this to happen. He still loves books, but often lacks the patience for us to actually read what's on the page before turning to the next one, so books with fewer words are favourites right now. But he really does love the page turning part, and adores the "coucou" books he has where there are flaps to open with something hiding behind. He's really good at them, and will open and close the flap repeatedly (to which we say "coucou" every time, of course), before going on to the next page.

Also, though it's too early to tell for sure, we think he might be left handed. Most things are pretty well equal between the two hands (such as handling blocks and toys), and page-turning seems to be usually done with the right hand, but I think that has more to do with the direction books are read in English and French. But when it comes to fine motor skills, and particularly eating, he does at least 80% and more like 90% of it with his left hand. His right hand will grab a piece of something and then just sort of hold it, while his left hand puts piece after piece into his mouth. It may change, but it's been like this for the past two months at least. We're both right handed, so it's a bit surprising, but by no means unheard of.

So there you have it - Béla as of nine months. We've got some other posts to catch up on that happened before Sunday, so we'll be going back in time slightly, but I didn't want to wait and write about what he was doing at 9 months when he's already 10 months old...