Updates

Here we are at 9 months, and there are definitely some new things happening with Sweet V. Not least among these is the fact that (as of today) she has 5, count 'em, 5 teeth. She enjoys giving them a workout on pretty much whatever's in her hands. Hands which have become rather dextrous, and she's managing to hold and handle a remarkable array of objects. I'm not sure why I'm surprised at how strong she is, but she actually seems to enjoy hefting larger things. This is cute, although remarkably less cute when she uses said heavy object to whack her mom upside the head. Ouch.

Mealtime has evolved substantially. We started pushing solids with sincerity back at 5.5 months, and at this point she's getting about half of her overall calories from fruit, veggies, hummus, guacamole, yogurt, and the healthier bits of whatever we're having for dinner. Vi's had some things that I don't think that I had until I was 20: Korean food, Vietnamese food, goat cheese, quinoa, mango, etc. She does really well with pretty much everything but particularly spicy foods make her do a little angry-face-arm-shaking thing that usually ends those experiments.

Of particular note is that she keeps her arms stretched out to the side while she's fed. We did nothing in particular to train this activity, but it's pretty great. It makes for a very manageable, tidy enterprise. We're lucky not to have to scrub her down after every meal like some of the kids at daycare seem to require.

Mobility-wise, she's not quite crawling, but she's not far off. She's crawled short distances a few times, but nothing that seems to stick. I tried to catch it on film this weekend, but she was camera shy. She's also been pulling up on us, furniture, big toys, and she's got a serious down-facing dog maneuver. As expected, we're very much looking forward to crawling, and we did some hilariously random baby-proofing last weekend. Much needs doing.

The last thing of note is her vocalizations. She's making all kinds of cute noises and sounds, and she's much more consistently making noises when we're talking to her or playing with her. While she has said Mama and Dada among other baby words, they were essentially random sounds, but we're hoping that her first consistent words are not far off.

She would still like to scratch the crap out of your face with her tiny little fingernails. I will be okay with it when that one stops.

This about as close as we've come to documenting her "crawling"