Nathan cut his first tooth on Tuesday! He was sent home from daycare with a fever, so I was thinking we were in for a couple days of sickness. He definitely wasn’t quite himself that night, and he hadn’t been as interested as usual in eating on Monday or Tuesday.

At some point in the evening I decided to feel around in his mouth to see if anything had popped, and I felt something sharp! Its the front left tooth. Can’t really see much of it yet, but if he gives a big grin you can tell there is something there. This definitely explains all the tongue rolling he’d been doing for a few days!

Yesterday he was fine, no fever, happy, napping normally, just a little bit of a decreased appetite, so we think the issues from Tuesday were just because of his tooth. Hopefully he won’t get sent home from daycare with a fever everytime he cuts a tooth or we’re going to burn through our sick time!

“The Baby Girls” is what I call them, six of us who got pregnant within a few months of eachother, and one mom who had recently had her first (who is now about to turn 2!!). They have been a great source of support and friendship through pregnancy and beyond, and this weekend we made our second attempt to get the group together since all the babies were born (the first was last October.) We almost managed to do it, but poor Jackson got his first bad cold from daycare and couldn’t make it.

It was crazy to see how big all the babies are now, and so much fun to see them all playing together.

We somehow managed to get them to sit still for a few pictures.

Nathan definitely had fun!

There are more pictures from the afternoon here.

Nathan showed off some more crawling moves tonight! He still keeps one leg tucked under him and has one leg kind of straight out behind him. It was so exciting to see him moving around so much, and I can’t believe how quickly he went from being fairly immobile to fully mobile. He didnt even give us time to baby-proof. Oh boy, we have some shopping to do, don’t we? Things are about to get fun.

I can’t wait to watch Nathan get better at this though. Going to work tomorrow is going to be extra hard, since I’d really like to stay home with Nathan to watch him practice.

Nathan loves to eat his socks. He’ll pull them off and pop them right into his mouth (sometimes he gets help from Gary.)

These are some fun photos from last night when he rolled and crawled around our bed with the sock in his mouth.

Yay! I got my sock off!

Oh, I am so eating this sock. Don’t even try to stop me!

And now Im going to carry it to the other side of the bed

Because I’d also like to play with that fun flashing thing in your hand

As you may have seen in pictures the last few months, Gary has grown a beard. He’s been doing this the last few years for the winter and around this time of year he shaves it. A friend recommended that we let Nathan watch him shave so that he understood that it was still Daddy, even without the hairy face. Nathan was very interested watching Gary shave and couldn’t take his eyes away at first. He seemed a little wary for like 2 seconds and then Gary talked to him, and it was all good.

Before

And After

Obviously Nathan doesn’t mind the new look, though he probably misses being able to tug on the beard. (Im sure Gary doesn’t miss that part at all.)

Okay, it’s now a day later and I am pleased to report he’s crawling. He doesn’t have the typical hands-and-knees crawling form down but he is definitely crawling. It is more of a crab crawl with one leg in the normal crawl position and the other pulled up under him and his foot on the floor. The overall point is that starting last night, when Nathan wanted to go somewhere or get something, he went and he got. As a consequence he banged his head on the entertainment center trying to pull up on it. I guess it’s time for baby proofing.

Wow, now that Nathan has figured out how to sit himself up, he’s really moving. Not crawling, but he finds ways to get around. Most often he goes from all fours to sitting up, then rotates around, back to all fours and then sits again. This somehow moves him all over the place. He’s also figuring out how to move his legs forward when he’s on all fours, but he hasn’t gotten the hand movements down at all yet. He wants to pull up more than ever so he gets very motivated to move forward to furniture he can pull up on.

We’ve seen him do some crawl like forward motions without sitting himself up, but only once or twice.

Think he’ll be crawling soon?! Stay tuned!

Nathan is now going from his belly to sitting up and if he’s in his crib, he’ll then pull himself to standing. It happened so quickly! Thursday Gary said he saw him sit up from his belly, and I saw it for the first time on Friday. Now, two days later, we are almost always finding him standing in his crib after he wakes up, and I even found him there at 3am last night. He hasn’t figured out how to get back to sitting when he’s standing in the crib, but I’m sure he’ll get that soon.

Here he is going from sitting to standing.

We had Nathan’s 9 Month Check-up last Friday. He’s doing great, right on track with his growth and development. He’s 20 lbs 9 oz and 28 inches long, which puts him right in the 50th percentile.

Now the food fun really starts because we can give him more finger foods. The pediatrician pretty much said anything but fish and peanut butter, though there are other things we’ll wait on until Nathan’s at least one. So far he’s tried matzah balls and some mushed up pieces of french fries.

Here are some pictures from his 9 month photo shoot. More can be found toward the bottom of this photo album.

Who is this bear in my way?

He’s so proud and happy to be clapping.

It’s getting harder to do these photos now that he’s moving around so much and so interested in everything around him, but I’m planning to keep doing them until he’s a year because I love the comparisons from month to month.

We have graduated to real carseats! Though he is technically still under the size limit for the infant car seat, Nathan’s just getting too big for it. His feet hang over the end and he is pretty stuffed in there, especially with his coat on. We are installing the one in my car this weekend, cross your fingers it fits in my little two-door!

Here is Nathan in the convertable carseat in Gary’s car. He looks pretty skeptical about this new seat in these pictures. I think it was only the second time he’d actually been in it. Now he loves it since there is more room for him and he can look at himself in the mirror. As soon as he goes in the seat he starts staring at himself and talking to his reflection.