9 month update

Anurag completed 9 months this week. He continues to be a small baby at 7 kgs (~15 lbs) but is an active and curious baby. He loves being outdoors and joins Kabir and me every evening to go to the playground in his comfortable ergo baby carrier. He doesn't like to have too many strangers around him and always welcomes them with a frown!

He has been sitting independently for about a month and half now and started crawling a few weeks ago. However, he still hasn't figured out a graceful way to transition from a sitting position to a crawling position without banging his face against the ground. He is also starting to pull himself up to a standing position when provided with sufficient motivation :-)

Anurag now has four teeth. The bottom two teeth came in at about 7 months and the upper two emerged just a few days ago. Needless to say, he has been gnawing at everything within reach. He seems to think that slippers are some giant tasty teethers and goes after them with utmost urgency. So Kabir enjoys policing everyone and reminding that no slippers should be left in Anu's play area. He is turning into a protective and loving big brother. He can be heard saying very cute things to Anu through out the day (I'll have a separate post on his quotes).

Meal-times have been going well except when Anu went through an intense teething phase. We realized that he enjoys textured food more than mashed food so we have now started feeding him regular adult food without mashing. He also likes to hold slices of fruit, bread etc and feed himself. But how much 'feeding' happens this way is anyone's guess!

He has started babbling quite a bit - dada, tata, papa, mama etc. and it gets funny when sometimes he waves his hands in a bye-bye-like motion while saying tata (which happens by pure coincidence I'm sure).

Last month also saw the biggest mommy-blunder I've made so far. I left Anu napping on the bed with pillows propped all around him. I had under-estimated his mobility. Anu managed to climb over the pillows and fell about 1.5 feet down on the hard tiled floor. Fortunately he didn't hurt himself but it could have been really bad. :-(

This week we are leaving for a trip to the North - Delhi/ UP/ Uttaranchal - and will be back after Xmas. Anurag will get to meet more relatives and experience his first real winter!