9mo old!!!

How can it be???  Preston Blake is 9mo old!!!!!  Only 3mo until his first birthday!  I can NOT believe it!  I bought the first of his birthday presents the other day too

Isn't it cute?  And perfect because I plan to do cowboys for his first birthday theme.  

He is 17lbs 12oz as of tonight which is about the 10th% so he's still dropping.  He has his 9mo check up tomorrow morning so I'll update with his height then.  He is still nursing, of course, and doing well.  He upped his nursing for about a week while getting some teeth to where he was nursing every 1-2hrs..it was pretty rough because he was even doing that through the night.  But now he's back to about 6-7x in a 24hr period but he has gone from nursing right at 5min to about 8-10min each time.  He has also started really demanding this past month...to the point of grabbing my shirt and pulling it down no matter where we are lol.  So we are really working on the "milk" sign so he can tell me in another way he wants to nurse.  

He is also eating solids really well, he's on 2 meals a day now.  (plus puffs as a snack at least once a day)  We've tried getting him onto 3 meals a day but if he does that he nurses very little during the day and wants to wake really often at night to nurse to make up for that and then he's grumpy from not getting enough sleep.  This kid definitely likes to sleep.  He's waking 3x on average a night...usually 5-7hrs for his first stretch and 3-4hrs for the next 2.  He is having 3-4 naps a day, at least 2 long ones of 1.5hrs+ and then another usually around an hour and another of about 30-45min in the evening to get him through until bedtime.  

As of today he can sit himself up from laying on his belly!!!  He did it about 5x this afternoon.  He's getting on his hands and knees all the time now and rocking and you can see him thinking about how to crawl, he's working on it.  He's the type of baby who won't try something until he knows he can master it, so you can see him thinking and knowing what he wants to do but he won't attempt it yet.  He also pulled to standing 2x yesterday, sitting on the couch next to me he grabbed my shirt and stood up and then did the same with Mark a little bit later.  He is standing really well when holding onto things but still just plants his feet, doesn't move them around while standing so if he starts to lose his balance he goes down, he doesn't adjust his feet to catch himself.  I really think he'll be crawling before 10mo though...we'll see!  

He now has 6 teeth!  Poor baby had 4 break through on top all at once.  Now that they are through though he's doing much better, sleeping better, eating better and just generally much happier.  Though he is pretty  much always happy, he is such an awesome baby.  We always though Landon was the "best" baby, very content but Preston is even better.  He is almost never in a bad mood, almost never cries, is always so content and happy.  He also has such a loving, sweet spirit.  He loves on everyone, if one of his brothers gets hurt he is very concerned and wants to love on them.  

He's now saying 3 words!!  His first word was mama <3  Then he said dada.  He babbles ya ya all the time but it isn't actually a word.  Last night though, he woke to nurse and then was laying on the couch cuddling with me and started looking around calling out for dada.  I told him "dada is still at work, are you ready to go back night night?" and he looked at me and said "night night" clear as day!!!  I picked him up and took him to bed and he curled up on his belly, butt in the air and went right back to sleep.  He has started attempting to have conversations with you, if you talk to him he talks right back and keeps it going and is really watching your mouth close to figure out how to say words.  I think he'll be like Casen and talk really early and really well.  We are still working on signs and so far he is still only using "eat" but attempts to do "drink" and "finished".  He understands daddy, mommy, dance, milk and more as well but isn't trying to do them yet.  Landon asked me to look up "brother" for him so I did that and he's started trying to teach him that one :)  

We've been doing a lot of playdates recently which I love, he loves being out of the house and is always so good.  Yesterday we went to the park and the boys took him down the slide for the first time

Well I think that's everything for this month :)  I'll update after his dr appt tomorrow and when I take his 9mo pics in the next couple days.