I took a little blogging hiatus to deal with a crazy few weeks, including fun things like buying new furniture, visits from my sisters, birthday parties, and not so fun things like our car breaking down, tummy sickness, and a wisdom tooth extraction that did not go very smoothly, to say the least. Things are going better now, we got a really nice new car, the sickness is gone, and the pain is finally starting to subside a little.
These are petty and irrelevant things though when you take a look at the sheer number of skills, new things, and personality quirks that little miss Annie Sue has picked up over the past few weeks. She has made those not so fun things a bit more bearable.
So, to catch up on the last few weeks, this is all about Annie at 9 months:
She's a meat eater! After getting the okay at her 9-month check up (50th percentile for weight, 75th for height), she has since tried turkey (hated it), beef (loved it), lamb (liked it ok), and ham (loved it). Next on the plate is chicken. Hopefully she'll like it because that's a biggie around here. She is also getting into more solid foods, eating puffs, toddler cookies, mashed bananas, and mashed up raviolis.
She dances constantly now. It's pretty adorable.
She has mastered her walker toys--her dune buggy at home and her stroller at Grandma's. She's not so sure about pushing around her Ernie doll though, she will take him out to replace with with a coaster from the end table before she can continue her walk.
She loves to hold our hands and walk now, and she laughs hysterically when she does it. She especially loves "chasing" Gussie.
She loves to pet Georgie, and is surprisingly gentle about it. Georgie, of course, loves the attention.
She waves hello to everyone and everything, including the dogs, the mirror, and everything in her room, especially the light hanging from the ceiling. We have to admire that and wave at it every time we go to her room. We also have to wave at and touch the "A" on her door when we wake up in the morning.
She has lots of consonants now: mama, dada, nana, wawa, and baba. She is very chatty.
She loves feeling the water come out of the tub faucet and makes a beeline for the bathroom when she hears us turn it on.
She shakes her head "no" all the time, but rarely really means "no" by it.
She screams a lot to test out her voice. She does it when she's sitting in her high chair and also when we're walking through stores and restaurants. It's a tad embarrassing, but it's funny too because she's screaming bloody murder but she's smiling and laughing while she's doing it so you know she's just seeing what she can make her voice do. All of the old ladies and men in the grocery store think it's hilarious.
She loves riding her horse around the house. Unfortunately, it terrifies George and he chases her, barking, the whole time.
She loves playing in the kitchen when we're in there. She plays with Sesame Street magnets (that used to be Uncle Kev's), the bottom food cupboard, the spice rack, and the cork trivets on the baker's rack. She also especially loves sticking her hand in the dogs' water bowl, but we discourage that when we can catch her in time. Yuck!!
She loves wrestling couch pillows. She grabs them and then falls over dramatically, laughing hysterically.
She has 2 teeth on the bottom in the middle, and it looks like 3 spread out across the top (on the sides, the middle ones haven't come in on the top yet). Her teeth might be the most adorable things I have ever seen.
She has to have her mama rock her standing up next to the crib for a few minutes before she can settle down to sleep at bedtime. As long as I do this, she never ever cries when I put her down for the night. However, she cries every time I put her down for naptime.
One of her favorite things to do is look at books and turn the pages by herself. Her favorite books have real pictures of babies in them, her "Peekaboo" book from Aunt Meg and "All About Me" that I picked up. She can read those over and over again. There is a mirror in the back of the Peekaboo book that she kisses every time.
She chases the boys at the babysitter's house. I don't know if this is cute, or terrifying.
I'm trying to teach her "So Big!" and to clap, because she loves it when I clap. The other day when we picked her up at my mom's house I picked her up and first she did raised up her arms for "So Big!" and then she clapped right after! It was like she was showing me all of her new tricks at once. She hasn't done either one of those things since then. I have a feeling she will soon though, at the rate she's going!
Annie really loves her books. She loves sitting with her books surrounding her, crawling around in them and sitting with one in her lap, flipping through the pages, studying the pictures intently. There are only certain books that she will allow you to sit and read to her. The rest she has to sit and study by herself, looking at each page for a minute and then pointing to a few things on the page with the tip of her finger. Wendy says that during storytime at daycare Annie insists on turning the pages for her, most often before she's done reading that page, since she doesn't quite get that the words you are saying are what is on the page. 
I'm really excited about this development. I'm hoping it means she'll love books just as much as her mama. I have spent hours daydreaming about sharing all of my favorites with her, a crop of favorites for each age. I am constantly on the lookout for good finds. Recently those have included a bunch of old (late 70's-early 80's) Sesame Street & Fraggle Rock books from a thrift store trip, a bunch of awesome vintage books from this site, and a brand-new, beautiful copy of Where the Wild Things Are (that was more for me since I don't have my childhood copy anymore, and I am so super excited for the movie). My mom has been helping build her library since I told her I was pregnant, even searching online to find 2 of our old family favorites ("Sylvester Bear Overslept" & "But No Elephants!"). I can't wait until we can snuggle up to read them together. For now I am really enjoying watching her discover her books, and dreaming about all of the good ones I need to share with her!
(The only thing that put a damper on our visit? The cops throwing out a creepy man who was hanging around barefoot with no kids, wandering around striking up conversations with the kids without parents there. A tad upsetting, but we still managed to have a good time. Just a reminder that we will never be able to let her out of our sight while she is growing up. So different from when I was a kid!)
