WOW! Im not even believing I have a 9 month old. Elliot is the joy of my life. We pretty much spend every waking moment together so we have become best buds. He is crawling now and is VERY fast. He is pulling up on just about anything and everything he can. He is pretty fearless. I have seen him let go and try to stand on his own a few times but he falls within a few seconds. He is babbling and says "dada" and several other sounds, but not "mama" :(. Im pretty sure he is holding out on me because it makes me crazy. He is sleeping really well and eating most things i give him. He does not always eat a whole serving of baby food but at least he takes a few bites of what i give him. He is sleeping really well and only wakes up in the middle of the night occasionally for a bottle. The Pedi said he does that when he is going through a growth spurt. I agree because he usually drinks an entire 8 oz bottle and then goes right back to sleep. He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. He has been learning to wave hello and bye bye. Yesterday he even put a sound to his wave. It was really cute. I tried to get a video but he wouldn't do it a second time. He has learned to clap in the last few weeks and that is so cute. He claps all the time now.

We started going to a KinderMusik class on Saturday mornings. Elliot really likes being there and he LOVES the teacher. She is such a fun lady and sings and talks in a really high pitch and Elliot just stares at her like she is the most interesting person in the world. During parts of the class, the babies are suppose to lay down and the parents are suppose to massage them. Elliot doesn't so much like to lay down. He is more of a crawl across the room and love on the little girls kinda baby (and by "love" i mean grab their face and pull their hair).

We went to an event at my parents church last weekend and put E in the nursery for a few hours. It was the first time I had left him with anyone I didnt know or in a nursery type setting for that matter. He did really well for the hour that he was in there. It is still really hard for me to leave him. It is really more of a problem for me than it is for him.

In the past month Elliot has been sick twice. We went 8 months with no illness and now 2 right in a row.

Elliot is starting to test boundaries. He will look at me and then race to Lexie's water bowl as fast as he can to see if he can get to it before I come get him (he has only gotten to it once). At work, I sometimes work on my laptop on the couch so I can watch Elliot while he plays. He is really interested in my computer and is constantly pulling at it. So I decided this was the perfect opportunity to teach "no". Brian and I try not to use "no" often, instead we just redirect him to play with something else. However, its really important that he understand when he hears "no" there is no negotiating. SO, I sat down with my computer ready for him to come grab it. As soon as he did, I took his hand, said "no" very firmly, and redirected him to play with something else. After about 30 trials of this, he seemed to understand it. WINNER? MOMMY! So the next day when I sat down with my computer to work, I was sure he would remember "no".... no such luck. He came to me with a new game plan. I took a video of our interaction the second day... WINNER? ELLIOT!

On a related note... I have vivid memories of my dad trying to punish me and not being able to do it without laughing.

ELLIOTS FAVORITE THINGS
Bath Time
Baby Einstein
Anything Dangerous (plastic, electricity, cords, sharp corners)
TRASH CANS (really i have never seen a kid who is so obsessed with TRASH! One of the girls i work with calls him Oscar. He can spot a trash can across the room and be into it before you even realize he has seen it.
Andy, my bosses son. Elliot loves him and wants to be big to play with him so badly.