The Ninth Month

Benjamin was nine months old at the end of May. I kept meaning to take pictures of him on his special polk-a-dot blanket, but the last few weeks have been pretty crazy, and I was without a camera half the time because Rusty ran off to the jungle with it. And now it's too late, since he's almost 10 months old! So here are a couple of fairly decent recent snapshots:

 

Both of these pictures were taken at the Marcum's house. That's where the boys and I have spent about half our time this last month while Rusty went gallivanting off to the jungle on two different short-term trips. The picture on the right was taken with my iPhone! Pretty decent picture for a camera phone.

I spent a good part of Ben's ninth month trying to help him get over a stomach bug. He threw up and got bad diarrhea from some bad food we ate at the graduation ceremony we attended at the EQEB. Most of the rest of our family got sick, too. And then it took me awhile to get his digestive system back on track. We had to pump him full of probiotics and really watch what he was eating for awhile. Thankfully, he seems to be doing a lot better now. I am definitely going to be more careful about what I let him eat when we are out and about from now on.

Last week, I took Ben back to the doctor for a check-up, and he now weighs 8 kilos (about 17.5 pounds). We also got him caught up on his shots, finally, at least until his first birthday. I'm pretty impressed with the clinic I've been taking him too. The doctor we saw actually speaks English! What a blessing it is to be able to communicate about medical matters in your own language. I don't think I'll ever take that simple fact for granted again!

Ben finally mastered crawling during his ninth month, so now he is on the move! He "bear-crawls" more often than not, up on his feet instead of on his knees. He's also now pulling up on things and climbing stairs. And there are lots of stairs in our house, so we stay busy trying to keep him out of danger! He's definitely eager to explore his world and seems to have the uncanny ability to find the most disgusting thing in the room to play with, whether that's someone's shoe, the trash-can, or a dirty sock! Of course, at this age, everything goes in the mouth. Ewwwww! No wonder it took us so long to get him healthy again!