I know, you are asking yourself where in the world is the monthly picture of Karis in her pretty blue dress and pink rocking chair? But alas, we left our camera in VA at Grandma's and have no way to take a picture! They have promised to mail it to us ASAP, but for now, all I can give you is an update.
But what a month it was!!! Karis started crawling at 8 months, and this month figured out how to get into just about everything! She is soooo stinkin' fast! And now she is pulling up and trying to let go and stand by herself for a couple of seconds, as well as trying to push herself into a standing position from the ground! She is happier than ever, so glad she can move so fast and finally almost catch the kitty :) She never smiles as big as when her Daddy walks in the door and she takes off to crawl up his legs :) And her smile is getting cuter every day:) She now has 5 teeth and they are so cute (and sharp, too!)
Vocally, Karis is pretty much never quiet :) She chatters the whole time she is playing with her toys or people. She definitely knows that Daddy is da-da and will tell us over and over again :) She recognizes the signs, "no," more," "all done," and "water," but has never reproduced them on her own.
She can eat so much now! We are still breastfeeding and she is doing well with that, but she loves her table food, too! I have to admit, I have kinda become a health nut where my baby is concerned :) I got this awesome book called Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron (which I would definitely recommend to all mothers :) and it has totally helped me understand baby nutrition better. Karis's favorite breakfast is a cereal that I make of brown rice, rolled oats, millet, and pearled barely, mixed with avocado, a boiled egg yolk, and Brewer's yeast. The cereal is actually pretty good. I eat it too a lot of days, either with egg and cheese or apples and cinnamon. Her favorite snack is tahini, wheat germ, and cooked pears all mixed together. Unfortunately, she is currently somewhat allergic to yogurt and cottage cheese. It doesn't seem to bother her internally at all, but her little face gets a rash wherever the yogurt or cottage cheese has touched. I am going to try to make my own yogurt and see if I can make it milder so she can eat it. Her favorite snacks are apples in the mesh chewer, a teething biscuit, and cheerios. Oh, how she loves cheerios! She loves to bite it in half for some reason :)
I decided that if you are still checking this blog after nine months, then you must really care about my sweet baby and would like to know areas to pray for her. I think I'll just give my top two areas of prayer each month:
1. That she would respond properly to discipline and obey Mama and Daddy as one day she will obey Christ. This is really more a prayer for me to be consistent and know what she can understand and obey at each stage! She definitely understands "no" because she will stop what she is doing, pull back her hand, and look up at me :) But sometimes she will do it again and of course, I need to be consistent in my response! Our current areas of struggle right now are standing up in the bath tub and rolling around on the changing table :)
2. That she would continue to sleep 13 hours at night and that traveling won't mess up her sleep so much -- Over the Christmas travels, Karis started waking up every 3 hours again, which was a nightmare! She got back into her 6:30 pm - 7:30 am schedule, but every time we travel, it gets messed up again!
Thanks for reading such a long post and for caring about my sweet, precious girl!
My dad mailed the camera to us super-fast, so here are her traditional pink rocking chair - blue dress pics. Its getting harder and harder to take these, because Karis really doesn't stay still for a second. She wants to stand up or leap off the chair to grab something she sees. But I'm determined to do it every month so we can look back and see how she has changed :)
