Nine Months, give or take

Ellie had her nine month check up last week and the doctor only confirmed what we already knew - "she's perfect!" Perfect she is. We couldn't have ordered a more perfect baby if we had tried. She is truly a happy baby nearly 98% of the time. We drag her everywhere we go and she just moves with the flow of things and checks out the new scenery. We are so thankful for that as we love to be out and about a lot.
Somehow Brian and I created a petite child. Our little peanut weighed in at 15 lbs, 15 oz (5-10%) and was 27 inches long (50%). The doc was not at all concerned about her weight as she has followed the same growth curve since birth. Despite the lack of heft, she does have nice chubby thighs and good baby fat everywhere so she's not a skinny minny. He was impressed with her milestones as she is ahead in most. So, a good visit was had by all with the exception of poor Ellie who had to have her 6 month shots (yeah, we were a little behind!)

Because of her size, we guess, she is extremely agile and mobile and has been for some time. She has been crawling for a while but really prefers to stand and cruise around the furniture or whatever else she can hold onto. She was pulling herself up and standing before the crawling and still prefers it that way. This week she has started to stand unassisted for a short amount of time before her legs give out and she goes to the floor. I think she will be walking soon, she certainly wants to! Here's a familiar scene each day in our living room as Ellie plays with her house. She loves to just stand on the "sitting" stump and hang out!

She is constantly busy and constantly "talking" these days too. She says a lot of mama, dada, nana, etc but it's not clear still whether she really intends them to mean us or not-but I like to pretend she does anyway!

She is amazing and perfect and just every other great word you can think of times 100! I still cannot believe that she is here and is all ours.

Here are a few of our recent favorite video clips:

• Giggle Box (I was spitting her pacifier out of my mouth and hitting her in the face-a desperate measure on my part in keeping her happy after a very long car ride on our New Year's trip.)

• Yea! (this was around Christmas, her first claps!)

• Piggies (a favorite song right now)