Erica is 9-months

My baby is growing up so fast. Over the past few weeks she's made some major milestones and I feel like I have two toddlers now! One just sleeps more than the other...

Erica's first tooth broke through just after her 9-month-day. It's her bottom left tooth and it's taking it's sweet time coming all the way in, two weeks later there's only a little showing. She was pretty unhappy about it at night, but didn't seem to notice during the day. Her sleeping went from bad (waking every 3 hours) to awful (waking every hour) but we seem to be back to just bad now. :o)  (Two days later update: Erica slept 6+ hours two nights in a row!!!)

Erica is 'walking' holding our fingers all the time. It's all she wants to do. She seems to be a woman of routine too (must get that from her dad). She grabs my fingers and heads straight for the chalk. Tries to eat a piece. I take it away. She walks to the stairs and tries to put her foot up, when she can't quite reach she goes into the living room to walk up the slide. Shooting down yet another one of her brilliant ideas, I re-direct her to the toys, plopping her down in front of some shakers and animals. She screams. I walk away and she plays for two or three minutes before crawling (yes she crawls now!) back to me and the circuit starts again.

She is babbling a lot and seems to recognize that "dadadada" is Daddy and "nanamama" is me. She also repeats Amelia when she says "Ta-da!" and I'm pretty sure she said "hi" yesterday when a friend came over. We are working on animal sounds, she loves to sit on the floor and watch daddy make cheetah and elephant sounds. She sometimes does "roar" with her hands up for any random animal (did you know that cows roared?) She especially likes to babble when walking.

It is amazing to me how different two sisters can be. At this stage, Amelia loved cheerios and wasn't big on purees. Erica is just the opposite. She will eat cheerios but gets bored after 3 or 4. However, she will down a whole cup of yogurt smoothie mixed with baby cereal and can dominate a squeezy pack in 60 seconds or less.

Some other things Erica enjoys:
Blowing raspberries on my shoulder (at 2AM)
Swinging in her baby swing on the swing set
Picking (and eating) clover flowers from the yard
Riding in the cart at the grocery store
Pulling hair
Soxy
Amelia dancing and singing
The magnetic letters on the fridge
Anything that rattles

She is 21lbs 3oz, 28.5 inches long, and her head is 99th percentile (to hold all of those brains). Love her.