Ahhhh 9 Months Old

My sweet baby is 9 months old now.  He is really so much closer to "toddler" then "baby" now, and he has been out in the World for as long as he was in me... I have a hard time with 9 Months.

Tyler has added all kinds of new tricks this month.  His first two teeth came in on January 8th and 19th, the bottom middle ones.  He does not like to let us see them, touch them, or check for new teeth!

You can almost see his little teeth here, bottom center!

Somewhere along the line in the last month he started being able to sit himself up, from both his belly and his back, he does this like it's a breeze now!  He is also crawling up on his hands and knees about half of the time now, but still army crawling a lot.  He's managed to get himself into some unusual spots too!

Last week, on the 26th, Tyler pulled up to stand for the first time.  First he did it using Tim, who was laying on the floor, and pulled himself right up Daddy's belly to get to a toy.  Later in the evening he climbed up my arm while I was sitting with him on the floor.  Finally he did it a few times on the ottoman.  He has done it a few times since, but is not making a regular habit out of it quite yet.  Possibly because he has not figured out how to get back down easily!  When we first started standing him up against things he would eventually kind of melt back down to the ground.  Recently he looks more like a tree being cut down!

On the 28th Tyler crawled up the one step from our basement to the entry landing.  Again, his decent was not smooth, he came down face first!  On the 1st he made it up Mom's two steps from the family room to the breakfast nook.  She's in trouble now that he can get out of that room!

On January 31st, after a week and a half of lots of waving at him, Tyler hesitantly waved "bye bye" to Daddy and Timmy when I was taking him to bed.  I'm looking forward to lots more waving, and hopefully soon some true kisses!

Tyler is becoming more of a Mommy's boy, he will go to Tim of course, or whoever else, most of the time, but he doesn't like me to leave the room when someone else has him.  Tim was hoping for a Daddy's boy this time around, but I'm happy to have them both picking me as their first choice for snuggling!

Last week Tyler decided to make me actually start putting him to sleep instead of just putting him in his crib and immediately walking out of the room.  That was the only way I was spoiled with his sleeping patterns!  Three nights ago, he sat himself up while protesting going to bed.  I immediately had a flash back to what was really my first big regret with parenting Timmy: not teaching him to self-soothe for bedtime before-he-could-stand-up.  He obviously wasn't going to fall asleep while he was standing!  Crying-it-out took forever with Timmy!  I almost had a panic attack when I realized I could be making the same mistake again!  Tyler started crying-it-out right then and there!  The first two nights took a lot of in and outs, but last night wasn't bad, he didn't cry long enough for me to even go back in once.  I'm hoping for this to be a less painful process this time around!

I think that Tyler is going to be more serious then our little jokester, Timmy.  It takes more energy to get Tyler to smile and laugh, but when you do he really lights up!  He is hard-headed and persistent.  He is so, so sweet.  I think Tyler is more like my personality and Timmy is their dad's.  I think it's a good mix for our household!