9 Months

At his 9 months check-up Austin was 19.4 pounds (25th percentile), 28 3/4 inches (50-75th) and in the 50th percentile for his head. So he's going down in weight, though he still seems huge to me, but I guess that's mostly because he's a boy and Victoria was in the 5-10th percentile at this time and Karissa was in the 15th.

It's also strange to me that he's not crawling yet, since his sisters both were by this time. First I was thinking that he's not strong enough yet in his upper body since he never liked being on his tummy, but I have seen him go into a plank position many times lately. (He was in the plank position in order to avoid being on his tummy, so he just lifted up his whole body with his arms.) His preferred position now is standing. I have to actually bend his legs so that he will sit now, but he his happiest when standing, with support, of course. I'm beginning to think he will walk before he crawls, but I don't know how I feel about that. They say it's best for babies to crawl first. I guess he'll just do what's best for him, since I have given him plenty of opportunities to crawl, or at least he hasn't been stuck in some toy, since he could sit on his own. So we will see what happens!

He currently loves anything that makes "white" noise. We have three vacuums and he loves all of them and cries when I turn them off. He actually tries to help vacuum with the smaller one. Today he tried to mop, too. Last week I made curtains for our slider-door and he loved the sound of the sewing machine, which made making them easy for me since he just sat there laughing and bouncing every time I pressed the pedal.

The past few days he's been saying "Ahth, ahth, ahth!" He was doing that at the end of Primary today when he was with me and all the kids watched him instead of the Bishop.

He loves to go into the basement where all the toys are. Whenever we start going down the stairs, he'll kick his legs in anticipation of the wonders in "toyland".

Here are his teeth. BTW, he is the most ticklish baby ever, especially on his ribs!

Here he is helping me vacuum.

Yesterday, we went ice skating as a family at the ice skating rink where the gold and silver medalists for ice dancing practice. Victoria has been wanting to go ice skating since before the Olympics started. We decided to go yesterday since Jason has off class for mid-winter break. It turned out to be the perfect day to go. It was free, minus skate rentals, in honor of the Olympians, and they gave out little medals! Victoria did very well, considering she went one other time when she was 3. Karissa did okay, but she'll do better when she's older. Victoria definitely wants to go again!