9 months @ 10 months with more to come later

It seems like life has finally started to slow down a little bit. Soon after Allie turned 9 months, we went on a trip to Washington for a week and a half. After getting back, Jared's dad and step mom were in town for our new little niece's baby blessing. And then after our car randomly died on our way back from Idaho Falls one cold night, we decided we should get a more reliable car (even though it started up the next morning and has been running fine since). So we went down to Utah to get a car from BYU 4 days later. That was just last week, and we are now very excited to stay put for a little while.

Given all of our excitement, we obviously have a lot to share, but it is too much to do in one night. So we will go in chronological order. Tonight we share with you that which we meant to share before leaving: Allie's 9 month update...

We'll first begin with her measurements. At her doctor's visit, she was 28.75 inches (86th percentile) and weighed 16 lbs, 10 oz (13th percentile). But two days later at her WIC appointment, she weighed 16 lbs, 15.5 oz (not sure which percentile that was). She is still tall and thin, but the doctor and the dietitian at WIC were happy with her measurements and said that it looks like we are doing a good job with her. Yea!!

Though she hasn't seemed to do it much since we got back from our trip, Allie previously had some odd obsession with putting things in her mouth and letting them just be there while doing other things. An example is that she loved putting strings in her mouth while playing with other toys. Here are some pictures of her with strings in her mouth.

We know that everyone says that Allie looks just like Jared, but we believe that there is some resemblance to someone on Nikki's side of the family. What do you think?

Some of Allie's favorite toys were and still are Jared's drum sticks. She will usually just carry one around and poke things or hit things with it, but upon first introduction, she got the swing of things pretty quickly. Here she is demonstrating her natural musical abilities.

(please let us know if the video didn't work)

Allie's favorite spot in the whole apartment is in the windowsill. We have the couch right by the window, so we can sit on the couch and be by her, making sure she doesn't fall and hurt herself. If she is just on the couch with us, she will climb up us to try and get up into the windowsill.Once she gets up there, she doesn't want to come down. She loves watching people and cars pass by. She'll hit the window as they pass. If there isn't too much going on outside, she is content to just suck on the cord to the blinds and look around. She will usually cry when we get her down, so we have to try to distract her with anything and everything to make her happy.

Before our trip to Washington, Allie just started getting the hang of using her sippy cup. We had been offering it to her for awhile, but she would mostly just treat it like another toy, banging it against things and swinging it around. The following pictures are from when she first really started drinking from it.

Okay, so she hadn't perfected it, yet.

Allie continues to be such a happy and good natured baby. We are so grateful for her sweet little spirit. She makes us smile and laugh so much. She is also very busy and keeps us on our toes. We look forward to sharing more pictures and more recent updates with you!!!