This 9th month

Dear Joshi!

Your papa and I are continually awed by your lightening speed development. You learn so many new things each day and seem to understand more and more. It is like you are a sponge just soaking it all up. You understand so many words now. Like cereal, guitar, necklace, lion, little lamb, dream catcher, bath, book, hungry, mama's milk, no no, brother, papa, mama, kitty cat, bunny rabbit. These are the words you noticably recognize. In other words, if I ask you where is mama's guitar you turn and look to where it hangs on the wall.

You had taken a while to head shaking, possibly because of the visual stimuli, the rhythm of it. You shake it while singing and find it very funny when we copy cat you. You also love to at play banging on the table, this is most fun when mama or papa also pounds on the table in imitation. You love that game. We took you to the Deutsches Museum, to the kid's play area, where they have a bunch of instruments. You found it great to bang on the hand drums and the piano : )

When mama plays her guitar now, you insist on playing to...there is nothing that quite excites you like the sight of mama's guitar, swimming and bath time come pretty close, but the guitar definitely wins.

You are crawling, pulling up, cruising furniture. And despite being sick so often (for most of the new year so far!) whether it be with a cold or virus, or getting your teeth, you are in such good spirits most of the time. You now have since the beginning of January gotten 3 of the 4 upper front teeth. This hasn't been much fun for you and has made sleeping really difficult.
Putting you to sleep for naps or for the night has been difficult since the beginning. Sometimes you really fight sleep, sometimes you have trouble falling asleep. It always involves much coaxing, love and support from mama and some tears (sometimes lots of tears) on your part. Even though we have you in your own crib in the evening (until we go to bed) you do go to sleep alone even if you still sleep best next to mama. Usually around midnight, if you are still in your room, you insist on going to mama and papa's bed. You are still nursing quite a bit and show no signs of wanting to stop or give that up! You eat pretty well, but mama's milk is still simply the best. Your favorite foods right now are avocados and anything with potatoes.
You also now dance and kick when we listen to music, especially to your favorite songs. It is so cute!
Love you bunches
Yo Mama