World's Most Adorable 9 Month Old

Honestly, how can you not love this face?! Lukie is 9 months now and is ready to explore the world. He is super squirmy, a lightning fast army crawler, and always wants to be on the move. One of Luke's favorite things to do is shut doors, but always ends up shutting himself in a room and gets stuck behind the door when you try to open it. He is a bottomless pit these days and will eat any food that is in front of him. He is starting to feed himself some finger foods and sometimes get so excited to eat that he yells and starts shaking. He still refuses to take a bottle (only 3 more months Mister). I have to say, I didn't get what the big deal was with nursing when Taft was a baby, but that's probably because I had to pump when I went back to work and was relieved when we switched to formula. This time around though I'm glad I was able to nurse, but it sure would be nice to go out on a date without planning it around Luke's schedule. He loves baths but only likes to lay down in the tub, do NOT make him try to sit. He'll throw himself backwards and whack his head on the hard tub. Sometimes he makes a cry face that looks that that old guy from the "bitter beer face" commercials. 

Luke did a great weeklong stretch of sleeping about 11 hours at night, but has decided to wake up once a night again. He likes sleeping on his side and goes down swaddled, but doesn't stay that way for long. Luke and Taft have been playing together. Taft pretends he and Luke are both dogs and they crawl along the floor together. Luke still does not like Taft to get in his face too much or to be man-handled by Taft either. We tell Taft to take it easy, but also tell Lukie he's gotta toughen up. Taft will be bugging him for the next 18 years and vice versa.

Luke is starting to jabber and does those razzing sounds. He also started biting one side of his lip and I think it's the cutest thing. He's still ticklish on just about every inch of his body so it's super easy to get him to laugh. He's starting to get a little shy around strangers and has buried his face in me a few times. (I love that.) He had his check up today and he weighs a little over 20 lbs and is in the average range for weight and height, but his big ol' noggin is still in the 90th percentile.

Yesterday he pulled himself up to standing for the first time and he can now clap a little bit. I hate to jinx it, but his whining might be toning down a little. Here's hoping!