9 Months!

I'm sure I say this every month, but I can't believe how quickly time is flying. Elliott is 3/4 of the way done with her first year! 

This month Elliott...

• learned to pull herself up to things! She pulls herself up to her toy chest, our dresser drawers and today the couch. Usually the couch is harder for her because it isn't a hard, solid thing to pull against, but she did it! 
• learned to wave. She waves to everybody now. She did it for the first time at Kneaders to some random stranger and has been doing it ever since. 
• started eating real food. She has been eating solids for 5 months now but I have started feeding her whatever we are eating for dinner and she seems to really enjoy it. Except tonight when I was giving her a bath after dinner and noticed a mouthful of chicken. She stored that chicken in her mouth for over 30 minutes before Josh and I dug it out. Disgusting.
• can now say dada, baba, and occasionally tata. It's the cutest when she combines them all in one breath. She is getting so close to full-on babbling. Now I just need to teach her mama! 
•  learned to push a cart around the room. She is still a little unstable and falls a lot, but she can really go!
• learned to walk along things that she is standing up to. She will walk along the couch or her toy chest. 
• has started going from sitting to a crawling position and trying to scoot on her belly. She still has a bit to go before she is full blown crawling but this is progress people!! 
• took a couple steps! I wasn't going to count it, but a friend of ours saw her do it one night and said we should count it. She will stand facing me and take a couple steps towards me. She loves it. She gets so excited and proud of herself. Her longest time balancing on her own is 6 seconds! Usually its more like 2 though. 

Elliott still loves to read books. I feel like her love of reading is getting greater by the day. We read so many books every day. She sits and stares, points to the pictures, babbles away and flips the pages. She loves it. She actually gets pretty upset when we stop reading. She also gets upset when I choose the wrong book to read. She definitely has her favorites. Her current favorite is "Look out for the big bad fish".

Now here is the sad news (but also happy news). My phone had that annoying black speck on all my photos so I took it to the apple store and they replaced it! Great news, right? Well, I forgot to back my phone up before we left...and even though my phone said all the photos went to the photostream...I can't find them. So I lost her 9 month pictures. Bummer! I mean, she is only 9 months and 6 days, so I could retake them, but I'll keep looking and figure something out. Luckily I posted 2 of them to Instagram, so I have those. :) 

We love you Elliott!