Nine Months

Gracie hit the nine month mark on Monday. She has officially been in this world as long as I carried her in my tummy. It's strange to think about how different those nine months were from these. I spent a lot of time during the nine months I carried her sleeping and planning. Now I spend most of my time exploring and providing. I work in a little bit of house cleaning and some errands here and there but most of my day is spent watching Gracie explore her world and providing her with all of her needs.

She has become quite the adventurer. Sometimes I put her in the living room to play and head into the kitchen to do the dishes (don't worry we have a very open floor plan) and it's so fun to listen to her make her way around the living room and eventually end up at my feet in the kitchen. I can tell she is pleased with herself as she moves around the great room because every once in a while she squeals in delight. She squeals if she catches me watching her. She squeals if Preston starts to get excited about something. She squeals at the back door. She squeals when her Daddy walks through the garage door after work. Apparently we've never been apart long enough for her to get that excited about my reappearance. :)

She really is growing up so fast. She's still a baby but now she can crawl and cruise and walk behind the laundry basket (her mower toy with the wheels is a little too fast right now). She is even starting to express herself in new ways. She can scream and pout when a cell phone, or equally coveted item, is taken away from her. She can babble in ways that sometimes sound like conversation (I'll post a video on Sunday when my Vimeo account opens up again). She laughs when we laugh. She laughs at her own little inside jokes too.

The other day I was asking Matt if he remembered when she was so tiny and her hands just flailed about. She immediately popped me in the face as if to say, "Not anymore mom!" Sometimes I miss those days. I don't miss waking up in the middle of the night but I miss when she would just lay in my arms. Now she's hard to hold on to. Even when I'm putting her down for the night she tends to want to be in her crib. Maybe she'll go through a cuddly phase eventually.

We have her nine month check up tomorrow so I'll post her stats this weekend.

Note to Gracie:

When God made you He knew exactly what He was doing. He placed you in our family because He knew Dad and I had a spot that needed to be filled. When I picture my life now there are two parts - before Gracie and After Gracie. You make the after Gracie part brighter by the minute. Thank you for making our every day brighter.