9 Month-Old

Josie Bean is 9 months-old!  Oh, it is so amazing to watch how quickly she is changing and growing.  She is such a sweet and happy little girl and she is on the move!  She is incredibly busy exploring these days and has become very adept at crawling, pulling up, and cruising.  With these new found abilities, she is quite the mischief-maker.  She has a knack for pointing out our failures in baby-proofing.  If you set her in the middle of a room, she will immediately go for the one thing in the room that may present the most danger or, at the very least, the most mess - cords, the dog water bowl, etc.  She also has a particular ability to go after the one thing that Finn doesn't want her to play with (on the flip side, whatever she has is typically something Finn wants).  If he is building an intricate tower, she must knock it down.  If he is playing trains, she wants to pull up the track.  She also loves to egg her brother on.  I swear, whenever he is doing something that I have opened my mouth to try to get him to stop or tone down, she starts giggling madly and that just encourages him to no end.  It is so endearing and so frustrating at the same time!  Finn, will argue, "But Mama, that smiles her."  And all this curiousity and movement has led to challenges in changing and sleeping.  She just doesn't want to sit still long enough to have her diaper changed or have her clothes put on.  She hates being placed on her back and is quick to roll over and attempt to crawl across the room as fast as possible.  It has also been more challenging to get her to go back to sleep after waking up in the night.  She just wants to crawl and pull up and protests when you try to lay her down or cradle her.  Oh, but that sweet smile just makes us all laugh and I can't help but embrace her curiousity and tenacity.