Zachary - 9 Months!

I can't even believe this baby boy is 9 months old. Zach went to see Dr. Brian for his 9 month visit a few weeks ago. Much to Ava's delight her baby didn't have to get shots this time. Yea! These are his stats:
Weight: 15 lbs. 14 oz. (no percentile, off the chart)
Length: 26.8 inches
Head: 44.6 cm.

Zachary is still by far the happiest and "laughingest" kid you will ever meet. He will smile at anyone who even glances his direction, even if they are not smiling at him. If you do smile at him or try to play with him, you will get laughs, smiles and squeals. I've seen people pass by him in the store, airport, church and he will follow them smiling and trying his best to get a reaction even if they didn't notice him. He is so happy and just about anything will get a good belly laugh out of him, especially peek-a-boo.Zach is at the lovely age where he gets into EVERYTHING at his level. Right now he is tossing all of the shoes off of the shoe tray and all over the hall. He climbs on the dishwasher as I am loading it and empties plates and silverware as fast as I can put them in. He dumps toys out of cupboards, clothes out of drawers, anything he can get his hands on is thrown to and fro.He is such a good sleeper (except that he is awake every single morning by 6:30am no matter what time he went to bed). I put him down in his crib, he snuggles up to a little blanket (underneath him in the picture) and takes a good long morning nap and another good long afternoon nap. Good boy. He does, however, still wake up to eat in the night. I think my kids are built to do that until their first birthday, who knows why.Zach is pulling himself up to standing all over the place. He wanders around the coffee table very proudly. He stands in his crib crying for me to come get him when he wakes up. And the other day I walked into the bathroom to find him standing up against the toilet with a solid gum grip on the inner rim of the toilet seat sucking away. Gross!He is crawling EVERYWHERE. He gets around all over our house on his hands and knees and is pretty fast. The only problem is that there are stairs everywhere in our house. So we watch him carefully before he goes head first straight down the stairs. When the girls see him headed to stairs they run and sit on the first step to catch him yelling "I'll save you Hacky!"The kid was a good baby food eater . . . until now. Now I think he is offended when it is offered to him. He shuts his mouth and spits the food back at you. He wants real food and only real food, thank you very much.
Speaking of eating, Zach is at another lovely stage of putting everything he finds, while crawling around scavenging, into his mouth. We all watch his mouth carefully and go digging when things go in that shouldn't. I've heard that Polly Pocket shoes and purses come out just as they go in though. We'll see. Zach is for sure to let his opinion be known if he doesn't like something. He has started shrieking SO VERY LOUD when he isn't happy. It's so loud. We don't know what to do. He also wiggles and moves around SO VERY MUCH that he is extremely hard to keep a hold of. I'm blaming both of these on Scott.

We love baby HACK!