9 Months

Little Finnbar is 9 months old today! It may be silly, but this month seems like a big deal to me seeing as he has now been in the world for longer than the pregnancy. I don't know how to describe it. At any rate, I can't believe it. Seriously, since he hit six months the time has been flying by, punctuated by how quickly he is changing. He is a crawling champ and has moved mostly to bear crawling with his feet. He pulls up on anything and everything.
Often when he pulls up he will let go with his hands and stand on his own. He has gone for a full minute before he plops down to his bottom. This is the best picture I have been able to get of it thus far. He is playing with the tape on the box:
He has been quite the help with unpacking, anxious to get into everything:We have moved up to three meals a day and Finn is really enjoying food these days. He finally embraced it when we gave up on purees and started with finger food. But he is even more enthusiastic now that we are giving him large pieces of food that he can gum down. I was inspired by reading a lot about baby led weaning. It is simply the philosophy of giving your baby the control in the solid introduction process and it makes so much sense. I wish I knew about it before as it would have saved me some anxiety when Finn flat out refused purees. I have joined a facebook discussion group that is really great if anyone is interested. Here is Finn at the old apartment enjoying some broccoli. He loves it!
We have been loving our new house. Finn feels very comfortable crawling from room to room. I know you are all anxious for pictures, but we are just not put together enough yet. I swear I will get some up soon. We made some great progress painting and getting through some boxes this weekend. We have also been taking full advantage of our amazing yard. Both Finn and Lily are in their element.
Finn loves getting into Lily's water bowl:
Finn still loves pulling grass:
We were very excited to expand our baby-wearing capabilities as my friend Mandy sent me some of her beautiful woven wraps to try. I have really enjoyed back wraps. It frees up my hands and still gives Finn a cozy place to be when he wants to be held. I have successfully gone walking, made dinner, and picked blueberries with him on my back now. I am getting quite good at wrapping him by myself, but I have only mastered this one carry thus far. There are a lot of options that I am going to try. You-tube is great for learning these techniques!
We were really excited to put our bird feeder in the yard. We just have it hanging from a tree now. The first bird we saw to visit it was a purple finch, which just so happens to be the state bird of NH.
We also have a lot of gold finches:
So, we were welcomed fully into home ownership last night. Our water runs very hot so Sean went down to the basement to see if he could adjust the thermostat on the water heater. We haven't been down there for a week since the bubble up radon mitigation system was installed. Well, Sean came up from the basement around 9pm last night to inform me that there was 6 inches of standing water in the basement! Ah! The bubble up system was spewing water out of itself. And the old sump pump that the previous owners left wouldn't even turn on. So, on Finn's 9-month birthday Sean stayed home to buy a new sump pump, install it, and muck out the basement. We are awaiting a call from the radon guy to figure out where things went awry. Good times!