9 Months Old

Just yesterday, we celebrated Griffin's 9 month birthday with the usual picture in the robin's egg blue chair to chart his growth over time:

I also took several videos of the new moves he has developed over the past month.  Since his 8 month birthday, he has started: 
-crawling (fast!), 
-standing with only one hand holding on, 
-signing "fan," 
-saying "nana," "gaga," "dada," "yaya" and all sorts of other new sounds strung together in odd sounding phrases
-pointing at everything he's interested in (and making a questioning sound, like he's wanting you to tell him what that thing is), 
-getting very good at the pincer grasp (which enables him to eat all kinds of small pieces of food), 
-dancing, 
-shaking his head,
-walking with his little push cart.

We went to the pediatrician today for his 9 month check-up, and he is 21 lbs. 7 oz. and 30 inches long.  He has definitely slowed way, way down in overall growth since he was 6 months, but he is still off the charts in height, and above average in both weight and head circumference.  Our pediatrician explained that it is only a matter of time before growth like Griffin had in the first 6 months starts to taper off.  She said that most babies plateau a bit on weight when they begin getting mobile around 6-7 months because they're burning up those calories they used to simply store as baby chub in their stationary days of laying on their back all day :)

He has changed so much in just a month that it's quite hard to believe.  Why do they have to grow so fast?!  Recently, he went through a small growth spurt as well, and I was up in the middle of the night, rocking him for an hour.  Of course, my initial reaction to such a night time fiasco was frustration; however, as I rocked my sweet, crying baby, my heart melted as I thought about how much smaller he used to be...and how he'll never be this little again.  From there, it was a short trip to breaking down into tears as I considered the tough reality that one day, he will not want to cuddle with me, or sit on my lap, or be rocked by me, or play with my necklace, or reach for me to pick him up, or cry when he can't see me.  Someday, he'll likely be shutting himself in his room to be all teenagerish and angsty, and I'll be his "ugh.....mom.....why doesn't she just leave me alone?"  (Let's be honest...We all had one at that age.)  But, really...I truly AM going to miss this, long for this, and so I should treasure this...even in the hard times.  How beautiful and totally fulfilling to a mother's heart is it to be needed and wanted by her baby?  I am so thankful that God has given me a calling in which I can feel that sense of fulfillment on a daily basis.  


Here are a few videos taken yesterday: