Luke's 9 Month Update

 My little man hit the nine month mark yesterday.

He's not so little these days.

We went to see his doc for his checkup and he measured in at 22lbs 7oz and 29 3/4in long. Those are both 90th percentile for him. Aside from his little cold, he checked out fine.

Meanwhile, he's been commando crawling all over the house for a month, pulling down my floor lamp and trying to get into the dog food and disappearing into the bathroom. He's already pulled two doorstops off the wall. Kaycie likes to tell me, "Luke says, 'Where's trouble??'" because we all know he's looking to find it. And sometimes it finds him.

He wants to crawl for real soooooo bad, but he's having trouble getting his knees to coordinate with his arms and dragging himself is just easier. He's trying though, getting up on his knees or toes to rock back and forth before falling back down and taking off on his arms again. No time to work on skills like crawling when there's so much mischief to master.

Yes, that's the lamp he keeps pulling over. Notice the barrier of stuff he's managed to crawl himself over, which includes my giant camera bad, two laptop cases and three diaper bags. He's doing it again RIGHT NOW, AS I TYPE. Lamp = baby crack.

While he's not really doing the full on crawl yet, he is trying to stand up. His favorite thing in the world is for somebody to hold his arms and stand him up so he can bounce up and down. Well, that and pulling over lamp. And dog food. But you know what I mean.

Other favorite things? His sister. Especially when she gets up in his face and yells, "BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA." Don't ask. I don't know myself.

He also loves his cousins...

And of course that crazy pup.

He's a busy little dude these days and has a lot of changes coming his way. His doc said we could go ahead and start moving him off formula and onto milk, which will take a few weeks, but that also means he needs to get on the ball with eating real food. Right now he's mostly ambivalent and no real interest in feeding himself. I call him my lazy eater.

I talked with his doctor for a while about what to expect over the next few month. One thing I've been very careful with is not expecting him to match Kaycie's developmental timeline. She was freakish in her advancement and I know this. Doc said over the next month or so he should start waving bye, saying mamamama and dadadadada, pulling himself up, and becoming a bit more aggressive in initiating interaction. She also said his speech may be delayed not because of his brain injury but because of his sister. She said it's not at all uncommon for the second child with a talkative older sibling to not bother talking because the sibling does it for him. I totally see that happening. Kaycie talks enough for all four of us. BUT, that's the area of his brain that was damaged so it's something we're going to watch closely and probably worry about in the future. Fabulous.

We go back to see the neurosurgeon in November, by the way.

In better news, he's well on his way to being a MUCH better sleeper than his sister. We had problem with her... well, we're still having some problems with her sleep issues, but Luke is so easy I almost forgot to mention it. And I just jinxed myself, I'm sure. He's been super easy to get to sleep, will often go to sleep in his crib by himself (unless he's so tired he passes out while I rock him) and even though he's woken up around 4 the past few nights, he' goes right back to sleep with minimal effort. I didn't know babies could do that. I'm grateful for it.

So that's my Lukester at 9 months. He's way more laid back than Kaycie ever was, never went though the stranger/men anxiety Kaycie was so well known for, and seems to take the world in stride. I do love my little guy.
 

Wondering what K was doing at 9 months? I wrote about that here.