9months.

she certainly keeps us on our toes now. :) she...

*pulls up on EVERYTHING
*usually lets her self down from pulling up gracefully
*says dadadada alllllll the time. she'll throw in a mama, baba, nana, gaga sometimes
*loves to read and turn the page for us
*climbs all over us or whatever is in the way
*does not love the car seat. we just installed the bigger one so hopefully that'll be better
*fights her afternoon nap hard. she'll play in there for an hour happy as a clam before she finally falls asleep
*takes 2 naps, 9ish and 1ish both exactly an hour
*goes to bed around 7, still gets a bottle right before bed but hasn't been falling asleep with it which is good since the bottle goes away in a few months
*wakes up around 6:30/7 (man i wish this was a bit later, but i can't complain about my good sleeper)
*mostly sleeps on her tummy (with her butt in the air), but sometimes on her side
*waves "hi" and "bye" (this is a new development so we'll start working on blowing kisses)
*goes to the little gym on fridays
*doesn't like to be too far from me and will come find me
*is getting braver trying to stand on her own, she'll let go for a little bit now
*eats pretty much everything, i usually share my lunch with her so i give her a try of whatever (veggie soup, lasagna, chicken korma, rotisserie chicken, whatever).
*so far hasn't been allergic to anything she's eaten
*loooooves kiwi (slippery little suckers, but she can pick them up)
*has eyes like a hawk, i swear she's going to be a surgeon. she sees the tiniest things on the floor and picks them up pretty easily
*studies things very closely

stats from her 9 month appt:

height-- 27.5 inch (45%)

weight-- 18 lbs 11 oz (60%)

head circumference-- 17 3/4 (83%)

christmas.

fin's first christmas was definitely a success! a few months ago b and i were talking about what we wanted to to christmas break. did we want to stay in houston? did we want to go to austin? we thought about staying here and spending fin's first just the 3 of us, but after thinking about it we thought we'd just wish we were in austin with everyone. it's not like finley's going to remember so we decided to head to austin. we knew it was going to be a busy week, but man it flew by. we spent the first 2 nights at gigi and pop pop's, including christmas eve. christmas eve morning we went over to the shuley's house to do christmas with grandpa. we had a delicious brunch, opened some presents and the 3 kiddos played. then fin took a nap and it was time for church. she did a great job at church. after church we headed to p.f. changs for the traditional christmas eve chinese dinner. growing up we ALWAYS had chinese on christmas eve (still don't know why) and now we've expanded it to include everyone. this year i think there were 24 of us. yea, it's tons of fun. we weren't sure how andrew and finley would do since they are both set in their (very similar) schedule and this was going to be past bedtime, but they were awesome. it probably helped that they were entertained and everyone was willing to help out. we ate and ran to get fin home at a decent time to go to bed.

christmas morning we woke up and fin checked out the presents under the tree. she found one that interested her greatly-- her little einstein activity table-- and that kept her entertained for a while. she took a nap and then back to opening presents. she of course got spoiled terribly. she actually really liked to rip the paper off her presents. then we went to coco and mo's house for the afternoon.