Nine Months

Seriously, Mom. We have to do this every month?


Oh, look. You have car keys.


Like I'm really going to sit still for that.


Yes, folks. We have a crawler. Charlie was really working on this before the move, but really took off after we got here. Let me tell ya, if any of you have reluctant crawlers out there, a DVD player set up close to the ground is a real motivator.


It's also a real bruiser. (Don't worry, Grandpa, this faded completely the same day. He's fine.)


But bruising is good for his street cred. His latest nickname is "Charlie Davidson." It's hard to capture in a picture, but whenever we put Charlie in his chair to eat, his hands are always in motion like he's revving a motorcycle. (It helps if you imagine Ellie sitting next to him humming while she eats.)


Pretty fearsome, huh?

Charlie has really been developing more and more lately. Every day seems to be a new trick. In addition to crawling, some of the highlights include clapping, giving "five," all kinds of gargling and spitting (hard to explain to Ellie that she can't do this outside of brushing her teeth when Charlie does it everywhere), and lots of new jabbering sounds that are starting to have more consistent meaning (for when he wants Mom or Dad).




He also learned to pull himself up to standing recently (which sometimes makes falling asleep at naptime a little harder--argh!). He loves to watch cars drive by and just smile and make little happy sounds to them (by comparison, Ellie liked to sit out on the balcony and holler after the cars in Knoxville).  (p.s. These pictures kept loading sideways. He really is standing up. I don't know why Google couldn't load them right. I tried.)


He gives the best bear hugs ever. He will squeeze and burrow his head in, come up and check to see your face, and then burrow back in. I told Brady that one of the best parts of my day is sitting in the rocking chair with him at bedtime, singing lullabies, feeling his arms on my neck. One of the worst times of my day is putting him in the crib and hear his dramatic crying, weeping if you will, as I walk across the room to the door. The thing is, most nights he stops as soon as I close the door and he goes right to sleep. It's like he feels like he just has to put up the effort still. He's had a pretty good instructor in the baby bedtime theatrics.


But he is pretty irresistible, and he knows it. Like any baby, he has his fussy and cranky moments, but he's usually a pretty happy kid, and we're pretty happy to have him.

(We're still working on getting settled in after the move, so I'll give you more of the update on that later, but I wanted to get a good Charlie post up for all his adoring fans.)