Sunday Afternoon

I took a few videos of Darci today as we were hanging out. Isn't she just the cutest kid ever?

9 Months Old!

I'm a week late with this post, but it's time to take stock of Darci's amazing skills. :-) She is about 27 pounds by my estimate stepping on the scale with and without her. We go to see Dr. Harris on December 8 for her 9 month appointment so we'll know for sure then. She's in 9-12 month clothes, so anyone thinking of Christmas should look at 12-18 months.

She is getting closer to walking every day. I predict she will be taking her first steps by Christmas. She prefers to walk around the living room and we have a lot of furniture and Rubbermaid bins around (aka baby barrier) so she can do a circuit of the whole room. She's recently started trying to climb the bins, so I suspect we will be figuring out a new babyproofing system soon.

It is obvious now that she understands her name, and almost always turns when you call her. She says Dadda and Momma and on occasion it seems like she says them to us, although not yet with any regularity.

Darci reaches to be picked up and is usually standing in her crib when we go to get her up. She still naps 2-3 times during the day, for 20 minutes to an hour each time. She's branched out on her eating, we feed her different jarred baby foods now and a variety of snacks. She loves her yogurt snacks, cheerios and her "cheesy poofs". She will now feed herself rice teething biscuits, although she still has trouble trying to feed herself finger foods. Everything else she grabs goes right in her mouth, but when she picks up food bits they end up on the floor!

Darci loves music and will turn to any source of music. I am trying to help her learn to dance, I can't wait to see her do a bouncing dance. She's a very easy baby right now and we're having a lot of fun with her. Christmas is going to be so fun with Darci to make it all more meaningful.

Nana Visits

Nana is here visiting this weekend. We've had a great time so far! Friday night we just stayed in and ate lasagna and watched Darci entertain us with all her recent new tricks. She now stands as much as she can, and only gets down on the floor to move from one place to another, or sometimes to play with a toy. She needs support for standing but will use absolutely anything that's handy, whether its stable enough to hold her weight or not.

Saturday Nana watched her for a while when Daddy left to clean some fish and I had to be at work. Then we played all afternoon and evening. Today, Sunday, Nana and I took Darci out shopping. We went to KMart, Ross and Shopko, with a side trip to McDonald's for shopping fortification. Darci got several new adorable outfits in 12 month size, and a few footed jammies. We are not shopping in the baby section anymore, which was a little bittersweet for me. Now her size is in the toddler or little girl section. We tried several pairs of shoes on her, but her chubby feet weren't having it. We'll look again tomorrow.

Nana also got her a bunch of new toys, which I'm sure will all be featured in videos here eventually. She got her own "tv remote" and some other toys that light up and make noise, and some simple toys like textured balls. When we got them all out of the packages at home, Darci was really into them all and it was fun to watch her explore the new toys.

Getting Around

I took a few little videos of Darci moving around this afternoon. She is a little unsteady still but for the most part she can get herself to wherever she wants to go right now.