Reid is 9 months old

Isn't he just too darn cute?

Unfortunately, he's tenth month isn't starting out so hot. Our normally very happy, smiley, easy-going baby is very uncomfortable. He is battling the icky hand-foot-mouth virus. (I know it is technically called disease, but that just sounds too gross, and really, it's just a virus). Luckily, he doesn't have too bad of a case. I took these pictures today, and you probably can't even tell in the photos that he has it. Now, if you changed his diaper, there'd be no doubt.

But let's recap the ninth month. Reid has learned how to crawl. He is very good at army crawling. He can crawl on his knees, but he's not as coordinated that way, so he only takes a few "steps" and then decides it's much faster the other way.

He has also started to pull himself up onto objects. For instance, the other day Steve caught him pulling up onto the bottom shelf of one of the end tables in the living room. Today, I caught him trying to pull himself up the stairs. Luckily, he was not as successful with the stairs. One of his favorite games lately is to pull himself up onto my stomach while I'm laying on the floor. Then he crawls over me to the other side. He's quite the acrobat.

He still cannot get into the sitting position by himself yet. But if you help him get there, he can get down pretty easily by himself. This has made bath time much easier!

Reid loves to play ball. This is a pretty recent development in the last week or so. If you sit him up and then sit across from him, he'll try to throw you the ball and enjoys catching it when you roll it to him. I can occupy him for quite a while with this game. And Jack will even play with him like this for a minute or two every once in a while. It gets entertaining when Reid gets excited and accidentally throws the ball behind himself. He usually figures where the ball went after a minute or so.

He's babbling like crazy. He says "da da da" a ton. I also hear about that from Steve :). Reid will also say "ma ma ma" and "ba ba ba" a lot too. A few times, I thought he has repeated "hi" when I've said it to him, but I'm sure I'm just wishful hearing. Reid loves to "talk" with us though.

As for food, he has started eating finger foods. We started with the puffs, and he picked that up pretty quickly. At my nephew's christening late last month, he went to town on some watermelon. He also seems to like cantaloupe and strawberries. This morning, he tried a little banana pancake. The HFM has made eating a challenge though, so he hasn't eaten much in the past few days. His poor throat is just too sore.

As for sleeping, he's getting better. Of course, the illness has wreaked havoc on that, but when he was well, he was sleeping from about 7 p.m. until about 6 or 6:30 a.m. He also consistently takes two naps, although they are each only about an hour.

I don't have his height and weight yet because his 9-month checkup is scheduled for August 27. So I'll add that to this post once we go to that appointment. In the meantime, he is wearing 12-month clothes.

So here's the stuff you are really reading this post for... the monkey and other pictures. Enjoy! We had lots of fun with the new lens this month!