Nine months and five days old. Jacob has spent nearly as much time out here with the rest of us as he did getting ready to come out and meet the world. It feels like we've known him forever. He's such a goofy, wonderful, loving, curious, energetic little boy with an amazing sense of humor.

Today was a fun day with The Boy. He became quite enamored of the plastic alligator I brought home from New Orleans a few years ago. Crawled all over the place with it clenched in his fist or in his mouth. He must have enjoyed the way the gator's rough spiky exterior felt on his gums. He's got one whole tooth, about 3/4 of one right next to it, and on the top he's got one 1/2 tooth and one 1/4 tooth. Last week he discovered that he could make some seriously disturbing noises by rubbing (grinding) the teeth together. Luckily for us, he seems to have moved on from that pastime.

His vocab these days - lots of yelling at the dog...sounds like of like "Hey!" He says "mamamama" and "dadadada" or "daddy". Hard to tell if he's actually talking about one of us. Still lots of consonants...he's been experimenting a lot with the letter T lately. He laughs with great abandon.

He's gotten a lot better about playing by himself. He needs to know we're nearby, but he is often happy sitting in his pack and play playing with his toys. Very encouraging.

Music - Jacob LOVES doo-wop, and will bounce/dance to it in his crib. He loves pounding on drums. We have congas downstairs and he loves it when I hold him up so he can hit them. We brought a bongo drum upstairs for him to mess around on, and last week he finally stopped chewing on it, turned it around and starting pounding on the drum head. Yay!
We recently brought out my old Yamaha keyboard for him to mess around with. He loves hitting the keys, making funny noises by sitting on it, and playing with the pitch bender. It's so fun to watch him explore!

I seem to have caught Jacob's most recent cold (Tim already has it), so I'm off to bed.

Until next time....