9 months old

Eston turned 9 months old last week, and his new tricks include: an army crawl (belly sliding on the floor, pulling with his arms, pushing with one foot), pulling up to a standing position, and recognizing a few words (i.e. when we say "elephant", he looks toward our fireplace where the elephant figurine lives). We go to the pediatrician on Tuesday, so I'll post his new stats then. At 6 months, he was 90th percentile in height and 10th percentile in weight. I'm confident we've beefed him up some since then with the variety of foods he eats. He has a poochy belly and some thigh rolls now!

Here are some photos from this weekend, taken by the Stovall family. We visited a park near the home of Eston's friend Jay (baby Stovall). Jay fell asleep in his stroller walking to the park, but Eston stayed awake and giggled through his first experience in a park swing. Eston also enjoyed the sliding board.

First Zoo Trip

Eston adores animals. He carefully observes our dog Shadow every chance he gets, and one of his favorite activities is to visit the animal figurines on our mantle. We took Eston to the zoo today to see those animals life-size. We took the baby backpack so we could easily navigate the crowds and so Eston could have a great view. We were somewhat of an exhibit ourselves because many zoo visitors commented on the backpack and had never seen one before.

Eston's "Broadway" Debut

My mom's musical this summer featured the 10 plagues (cows, knats, flies, frogs, etc), all played by kids, during one song. Eston has a little frog costume/outfit, so my mom decided he needed to be in the musical. Since he needed transportation, I was a mommy frog. I would NEVER have agreed to be a frog in a musical, except to transport my precious little tadpole. Eston really doesn't spit up that much anymore, and if he does, it's just dribble on his clothes. Wellllllll.... he saved a BIG ONE for the show. I fed him a bottle while we were waiting for our song in the musical, so he'd be calm and satisfied on stage. When it was our turn, we ran out on stage and started bouncing/singing like good musical frogs do, and I suddenly heard a burp and saw a LONG spray of projectile (seriously, it had a huge arc to it!) baby spit-up. The cute little 5-year-old girl who was playing the red nile beside us missed one of her solo lines because she was stunned by the out-of-control tadpole. I had to try REALLY hard to not fall off the stage laughing. Here's a picture of us with our frog family.