9 Months Old!!!!

As of yesterday, our BABY boy is NINE months old!  O-M-G!!!  I can hardly believe it.  It just doesn't seem right to me.  I told Ryan that the 9 months I was pregnant felt like 100 months compared to the 9 months since Ethan's been born.  I literally feel like I JUST came home from the hospital with him.  He has brought SO MUCH joy to our lives.  I am totally addicted to this little guy!  

Here's a little about our munchkin at this stage in his life:

As of yesterday morning, Ethan weighs 20 pounds and 10 oz!!!  He's a chunk!  It's probably the fact that he has equal amounts of rice cereal in his bottle as he does formula.  He usually wakes SO happy around 700am - 730am.   He takes a full bottle -about 8oz.  Then around 900am, he eats a jar of baby food, stage 2.  He loves anything that has bananas.  He finally is taking his baby food w/o any issues or gagging, so that's nice.  Then he takes a nap - usually about 1 1/2 hrs.  Then, around noon - he takes another bottle.  Then nap at 100p - usually about 2 hours this time.  After he wakes up, he has another jar of baby food - like veggies or meats or combo, etc.  Then, around 345p, I give him his medicine - Prevacid and Zyrtec. Then, at 400p, he usually takes about 4 oz of milk - just to avoid the super cranky time he goes through at night. At 430p, he takes a tiny nap - usually about 45 min or 1 hr... Then, he plays til 645p or so - then we start getting ready for bed.  He and Jackson have WAY too much fun in their bath!  While I'm getting Ethan ready for bed, he's usually screaming his little head off... he just gets so ancy and anxious and just screams to the high heavens, as my mom would say.  I rush as fast as I can to get him lotioned, dressed and then he takes his bottle and goes to bed - by 715p.  He doesn't wake up - he just sleeps as quiet as a mouse... a perfect little baby!  During the day, he is quite a fast crawler!  We finally put the gates up to keep him from going up or down stairs... He wants to pull up to standing position on EVERYTHING - tables, cabinet drawers, your legs!  He is happiest when he is standing!  He moves from standing at one object to another object now without any problems.  He is still wobbly when he lets go of whatever he is holding onto.  He has 6 teeth - and he's already bit me twice.  He is working on 2 more (that I can see).  He is saying "Da Da" occasionally and waves constantly.  He is usually very content to play by himself or just watching Jackson play - or getting into whatever Jackson is playing with, but sometimes he will scream when he sees us walk past him and not pick him up.  I only note this because I remember Jackson did this ANYTIME I wasn't right there giving him 100% of my attention, so it's really nice that Ethan will play by himself most of the time.  He has started sleeping with a bunny and a blanket and about 8 pacis.  I'm determined to yank away those paci's by 18 mos, so I'm hoping he'll be happy w/ his other "lovies."  My big concerns is that he still appears to have abnormally sensitive gag refluxes.  On Easter, I gave him a tiny bit of mashed potatoes and he gagged and threw up.  I know I'm supposed to be introducing him to "finger foods" but I can't even give him "Gerber Puffs"-which dissolve in the mouth almost immediately - but he'll throw them up.  And I have to put them in his mouth - he absolutely will not do it.  I cut a blueberry in half the other day and tried giving it to him and boom!  puke!  So - that's probably something I need to get figured out.  Other than that, he's absolute perfection and makes his mommy the happiest, proudest mommy ever.  Happy 9 Months, Ethan Chase!  Now, stop growing up so fast!  :-)