amelia is 9 months old!

this has been a big month for sweet amelia lynn! it is so fun to see her personality starting to show. she is still laid-back and content, praise the Lord! she is still sleeping and eating well for the most part, though those top teeth have been making for some restless nights lately. one has finally poked through, and the other is almost there! now that amelia is pulling up on things, she decides to practice this new skill in her crib at bedtime. she will be absolutely ready for bed but still want to play around for a long time. i don't get it!! the problem is that she is not really sure about getting down once she's pulled up, so we have to go rescue her. i figured out that if i send her to bed with a chew toy, she gets distracted with that and forgets about pulling up. she chews on the toy and falls asleep. so far, so good! (i'm sure as soon as i click "publish", she will wake up and pull up in her crib!) amelia's defining "trick" right now is shaking her head. to everything. the kids LOVE this and think she is saying "no". so we have fun with it and ask her all kinds of questions and laugh as she shakes her head. here's a few other things she's been doing lately:

amelia started solid food a couple of weeks ago and is loving it!



but you wouldn't know it by this picture....


after a few bites, amelia got used to the taste, and she has gobbled everything down since then.




(technically, she had her first real food a couple of months ago when i found pink toy horse hair in her diaper. a lot of it. as a result, caroline's pink glitter horse now has somewhat of a layered look going on with her tail. this can be part of amelia's memoirs as a third child.)

we did buy a new baby swing for our poor, neglected third child! she giggled and laughed the whole time.


and amelia has discovered her new favorite toy: the garden. we bought this for caroline for her first birthday, so i was pleasantly surprised to see how much fun amelia has had with it at her age. she crawls in it and plays for a good long while. she checks the mail...



she plants (and eats) her veggies...


and she has worked so hard at pulling up on the front door. too bad she's not the least bit happy.


amelia spends the rest of the day crawling, crawling, crawling. she is fast and she is quiet. stealth is a good word for her. i've managed to keep her in the living room so far, thanks to my trusty hall monitor, ethan. he has learned that he is not allowed to push her back into the living room, but he's gotten pretty good at letting me know when she is headed toward escape. :) here she is planning her next mission. she's thinking, "if i can't escape the living room, i can at least suck on some baby doll hair while caroline is singing on the potty." (and in case you weren't sure, her eyes are blue.)


i've been wanting to get amelia out in the backyard for some portraits for the last few months, and it finally happened. we ran out there one day after she'd just woken up, so i am sad to say that she still looks sleepy in most of the shots. i was happy with how this one turned out, though.


so our baby girl is 9 months old. so much changes in a month when they are this little. i'm trying to soak in every little thing about her. like these chubby little hands. and her fat little thighs. (too bad those things still aren't cute at 30!!) and her fuzzy little head.



i love this girl. and i praise God for her.