Happy Birthday, Abigail!

Today is Abby's 9 month birthday. She went to the doctor this morning for her 9 month appointment. She is now 17 pounds and 27 1/2 inches long. Matt & I had to fill out a survey about her last night to bring to the doctor and the doctor said she "excelled" on the survey. So I guess that means she's doing great or her parents have rose colored glasses - ha, ha. In all seriousness, though, she is doing great. Currently, she loves to stand up while holding onto something. For a while she would actually cry if she wasn't close to anything to pull up, but I think she has figured out just to crawl somewhere and pull up. In the past couple days she has even started letting go. I don't think she is necessarily trying to "stand." She just gets busy playing with something and lets go so she can work with both hands. She falls immediately, of course, but she keeps trying.

She is following Anna's footsteps with her love of Matthew Van Fleet books. Her favorite book is probably Cat because she likes the cat toy that squeaks. As soon as we start reading the book she just starts slapping the part of the book with the squeak toy even before we get to the squeaking page. She also like the books, Dog and Tails, also by Van Fleet, and any other books where there is cool stuff to touch.

At the dinner table she is busy learning to pick up food by herself and put it in her mouth. Right now Cheerios are a little too hard for her to chew, but she loves rice krispies. She's also been eating little pieces of pear and sweet potato. She has a little picture of a dog on a piece of plastic that she plays with at dinner. Sometimes she hides behind it and peeks out at us. She gets so excited when we say, "peek." And this morning at breakfast she and Anna played a game of "peek" using the rice krispies box.

Happy Birthday, Abigail! We love you so very much!