Alec at nine (and two thirds) months

First, as of yesterday, he is twenty four pounds, four ounces and 30.5 inches tall. That's 90th percentile for weight and 95th for height. No tiny pygmy babies here.

I need to stop waiting so long between when Alec actually turns a month older and posting that month's update. For one thing, he's closer to ten months than he is to eight anymore. But mostly because every day I wait to update, he starts doing something new, and at this rate, I'm going to have to add "advanced calculus" and "builds small nuclear reactor" to the list.

Only a week ago, if you put him down on the floor, if you came back ten minutes later, he would have found a way to move about five feet. He was pulling up to stand and cruising a bit, but not in a very focused way. But in the past week, he's started cruising with aplomb, working his way around the room via couch and coffee table.

And he has started crawling in the past couple days. He's not very good at it at the moment - right now, he reminds me of one of those electronic dolls that crawls, lacking any sort of speed or fluidity of motion. But I have no doubt that will change quickly. Just this afternoon, I came upon him enthusiastically crawling after K, going faster than I had ever seen him. It fascinates me how he has come to crawling from the completely opposite direction as K. She spent months wriggling around on the floor, valiantly attempting to get her torso off the floor. Alec, on the other hand, has always hated lying on the floor, and his way of getting to crawling is to move forward from a sitting position onto his hands and knees as a way of stretching to reach something he wanted. Eventually, he extended it to actually crawling forward a little bit, and there's been no turning back. We are so very doooooomed. Last time we had a newly mobile baby, we didn't have an older child sowing small chokeables everywhere she roams. And every day, Alec proves that he can reach some new place that we thought was safe. It's tempting to give into my desire to toss half of the contents of the house out the window, but it's a generally unpopular solution. Instead, I'm forced to go with Constant Vigilance and perpetual cleanup.

In other gross motor developments, he can get into a sitting position from lying down.

He is eating three meals a day now, feeding himself almost entirely. A couple weeks ago, I was passing K a piece of bread at lunch, and he announced he was ready for finger foods by intercepting it. He has an excellent pincer grip and uses it to expertly pick up Cheerios and small pieces of fruit.

Socially, he has improved his flirting skills by learning how to wave. He does both the whole arm wave and the finger bending wave, which are equally ridiculously adorable. He's also doing some proto-clapping, where he does what's clearly clapping motions but his hands only meet about half of the time.

I think this is the age when babies make up for getting even more exhausting by becoming even more extravagantly adorable. Last week, he cruised over to where I was lounging on the couch and spent an entertaining several minutes playing peekaboo with me by hiding and reappearing around my legs. He's starting to turn into a little person, who communicates and interacts in a more real way.

Piccies!