Carter David Kaltenbach: 9 Months

Wow! Here we are! Carter was 9 months old yesterday! In some ways it seems impossible! Carter is now mobile. He took off with crawling very quickly! Literally in a matter of 7 days he went from pulling up to his feet on his own to crawling. On January 12th he crawled from one side of our kitchen to the other side and that was it. It took him awhile to figure it out but once he did he was off to the races. He is all over the place and in to everything now. As soon as he stood up on his own and crawled he immediately started taking side steps. It took him about a week, after he stood up on his own, to figure out how to get back down to the ground. He is now cruising around toys and furniture fairly easily. He has even started to let go for a few seconds to stand on his own in the last week. A couple of weeks ago Dave was emptying the dishwasher. He looked away for a few seconds to put a dish away and when he looked back Carter was up on top of the dishwasher door. So I believe we're going to have a climber on our hands here very soon. Carter enjoys playing with toys, crawling over to see the dogs, getting into Mommy's plant, and getting into just about anything he can. He's very curious and seems to have no fear. This new found mobility is wonderful becasue he's happier for longer periods on his own. It does have it's drawbacks however. I now have an akle bitter. When he gets crabby he crawls over and pulls up on my legs and tugs on my pants and whines. This is lovely! When I'm sitting at the computer he crawls over and pulls up to the keyboard tray to try and reach the keys on the keyboard. Just today, he figured out how to open one of our kitchen cabinet doors. We've got to figure out how to baby proof our cabinets without drilling holes into them I guess...

Carter cut another tooth on January 23rd. It is his bottom right tooth. I'm pretty sure he's working on his top ones now. He's been pretty crabby lately and chewing on everything. He's usually a very happy guy, now that he's mobile and can play, as long as he's not tired, hungry or has poopy pants.

Carter has really started to enjoy "big boy" food. He loves Gerber puffs! I think he's actually spoiled because he refuses to eat Cheerios and holds out for his puffs. On January 24th, he had his first "big boy breakfast" of Cheerios and small bits of bananas. On January 28th, he had his first big peas and loved them. He had his first big carrots on January 31st. I'm not sure that he cared for them that much. He picked out the peas and left the carrots. On February 7th, he had yogurt for the first time. He loves it! On February 8th, I made sweet potatoe fries. He loves them! He can't get enough of them. Daddy tried cottage cheese today, February 12th, and it didn't go over so well. We'll keep trying that one because Elle loves cottage cheese. I hope Carter learns to love it too. Carter has also tried mostacolli with a little tomato sauce and liked that as well. He's a really good eater. We're just trying figure out how to make a switch from baby food to real food since he seems to like it better all of a sudden. It's just a little tricky with meat.

Carter has really started to giggle a lot. He has become very ticklish and giggles when you take your hand like you're going to tickle him. He's very ticklish on his sides, just under his armpits, and on his inner thighs. He also starts to giggle as soon as he hears my Nextel chirp. He knows that it's Daddy and he wants to "talk" to Daddy. He gets very mad if you take the phone away! He loves to play with phones and remotes!

Carter is still not sleeping through the night consistantly. He did sleep through the past 2 nights. That is if you consider up at 5 am sleeping through. He's starting to cry less when we put him down. In fact, last night he didn't even cry at all and that's the first time he's ever done that. He layed there for at least a 1/2 hour before he fell asleep on his own. I couldn't believe it! We still rock him with a bottle before bed but I think we're going to try and stop that and just lay him down like we do during the day. I just love that quiet time holding him in the dark. He snuggles up so close in your neck. It's so sweet! So it's kind of hard to give that up.

I guess that's about it for now. I don't have a lot of pictures to post. We've been having camera problems since Christmas. Most of the pictures I do have are pretty dark and not very good.

Carter is still not holding his bottle on his own. Ugh! He can hold it but doesn't know how to hold it up high enough to get any milk.