Trip to the zoo

Last week Mark and I went to the zoo with some of our playgroup friends. They all had a wonderful time. Mark fell asleep and had a nap halfway through, but really enjoyed the time he was awake. He didn't want to pet any of the animals in the petting zoo, but rather wanted to stay in the stroller. He did love the aquarium though!

The Pumpkin Patch

We took Mark to a pumpkin patch this weekend. Here is some video- enjoy! He loves his squeaky shoes too.

Fun times at Monkey N Around

Mark and I went to Monkey N Around with my friend Carrie and her daughter (and Mark's friend) Macie (she's three weeks older than Mark). We're so happy to see he is enjoying the train/car table- he's getting one for his birthday! Here are some pictures and some video. Enjoy!

hat

Just a quick drop in with a hat picture. Mark is growing into this hat- it should hopefully fit by the time it's cold enough to wear it.

Mommy and Mark are going through his closet, as it's finally starting to feel a bit like Fall. Plus, Mark has grown so much, some of his clothes don't fit anymore!

I hope to have some Puppy pictures soon. His cousin Kathleen had a birthday party on Saturday and Mark got to dress up in his puppy costume. He was so cute!

Growing so fast

He's growing so fast! Here he is in the high chair he eats in the most. He just got up from a nap and was about to eat lunch. He looks so grown up today!

Bottle strike

So, Mark has decided at 9 months old that he's too "big" for a bottle. We've been using Born Free bottles and loved them. He's been holding them by himself for quite a while (we took the sippy cup handles and put them on the bottles so he could hold them himself). About a month, month and a half ago he dropped to two bottles - one when he wakes up in the morning and one before bed.

Now, it's sippy cups only. He figured out how to take the bottle and squirt it around - so he'd "play" with it instead of drink it. But give him his formula in a sippy cup and he's happy. He also loves watered down juice and the yougurt/juice blend in his sippy cup too. And of course water!

So, we're using the playtex first sipster (he prefers handles) because our pediatrician at his 6 month appointment said he needed to not use soft spouts (they are kind of soft, but harder than most soft spouts). It's hard to find sippy cups with hard spouts and handles. We did find a few at Walgreens, but he prefers the first sipsters a bit better.

If anyone can recommend a hard spout sippy with handles, we'd be glad to know about it! Our little guy is growing so big, and independent.

Teeth

It is all but impossible to catch Mark showing his teeth. He LOVES to show them, but when you whip out the camera he clamps his mouth shut. We've shown his bottom teeth before, but never been able to catch his top ones. He has four on top and two on the bottom. We took these pictures today right as he was waking up from his nap in the swing. So you can see them a tiny bit ;)

He's teething again, and is having a hard time. Poor kid. We lost his teething necklace (another is on order) - and man, we can tell. He wore it every day when he was getting those top 4 teeth in a row - and he did pretty well. Now, it's a bit different. The Hylands teething tablets seem to be working pretty well though. And when it really gets bad he gets baby orajel teething swabs. Mostly we notice at night, when he can't sleep as well as he usually does. He wakes up a bit fussy, then puts himself back to sleep. He's more restless at night.

It looks like he's about to get some more teeth on top, and possibly on bottom. But we'll see! He is growing so big, it's hard to believe it's been 9 months. Enjoy the pictures and ignore the blurriness and/or red eye ;)