9 months

Our sweet Ambaby is 9 months old. She's been out as long as she was in! It's astounding how MUCH babies grow in nine month segments: the first nine months in the womb Amber started as a few practically invisible cells and grew into a 7.5 pound living breathing human. The next nine months she grew at least ten more pounds and almost ten more inches. She went from kicking her legs to rolling over to sitting up to crawling to standing in a mere nine months. She went from waking up 3-6 times per night to sleeping for 12 solid hours. She grew six teeth! She went from an all-milk diet to feeding herself breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's pretty impressive.

Another month, another PHOTO SHOOT!!

While I was sitting on the floor taking pictures of Amber, she kept coming towards me and I kept moving away so I could keep taking pictures. She didn't like it.

Bwahahaha.

 On the front porch.

Three times a day, every day. Sigh. Messy messy.

This week she started standing up in her crib. That grin.

Glasses thief!! I was going to change into my sunglasses for a run anyways.

Oatmeal balls! I make the oatmeal really really stiff and scoop it into balls so Amber can feed herself. I developed this technique with baby Jay, who hated all spoon-feeding.

The third hour of afternoon church is not for babies. I found them like this after church.

Jay and Rose were excited for Amber to crawl but now they're realizing what it means: no block tower is safe. They've taken to constructing barricades to protect their block buildings from the destructor-baby.

She's just so happy to travel around the house, picking things up in her little hands.

 Crawling: it burns!

Two weeks ago, they all had their two front teeth at the same time. Now Jay has lost one of his and Amber's second one is much more visible. 

Amber-love.

White babies, month 9

Amber is 9 months old, and you know what that means! Babyface comparisons!

As usual, the order goes from left to right: Jay, Rose, Amber.

Serious

Smiles

Bright eyes

Standing up

Nine months is SUCH a fun age. I love my little squishy babies.

Peach-pickin'

For family night this week we went to Bill's Berry Farm and picked peaches! Peaches, peaches peaches. Fuzzy on the outside, juicy on the inside. There were only a few trees with ripe peaches on them when we were there, and they were being watered with knee-high rotating sprinklers. We got wet but we also got peaches, so it was a worthwhile venture. Peaches may be the best thing about August. I was going to say that peaches are the only good thing about August, but that seemed a bit melodramatic, even if I often think it. I mean, August: hot, dry, low motivation, teetering on the edge of school starting. Blah. But PEACHES! They're the balm for all August ills--something cool, juicy, and easy to combat all that dry unmotivated heat. 

Amber had her first ride in the baby basket! She loved it. 

We walked between blueberries and cherries toward the peaches. It was conveniently overcast and not terribly hot that evening.

Jay randomly decided to wear an old corduroy cowboy hat from our dress-up bin, funny boy.

I love shady, close orchards. They are so peaceful and quiet.

Can you see the wet hem of my shorts? The sprinklers got me.

Tranquility. Although I fear the convenience of using my phone for pictures is compromising their quality. Sigh.

Returning with their laden buckets. About a third of our peaches got bruised and smushed on the journey back to the car.

One dollar per pound later, we were pulling out of Bill's with peaches-a-plenty. Yum! 

Anything for Indian food

This week we decided to go on a family adventure to Oregon. We picked out a waterfall and a food cart to visit there, packed some snacks and diapers, got into the van, and headed west on Thursday morning.

Three hours of conversation, random Rose-wails, crispy brown scenery, hundreds of Jay-questions, wind turbines, and bridges later, we found the waterfall corridor. There's a whole line of them along the road into Portland. A few years ago we visited Multnomah Falls. This time we set our sights on an easy two mile loop hike to the one next door called Latourell Falls. As we were creeping along scenic route 30, however, we noticed a large number of cars everywhere. They were crammed all along both sides of that skinny road, snug against the steep rock on one side of the road and perched precariously on the edge of the drop off on the other. The place was crawling with people! We grabbed a parking spot and walked a quarter mile on the side of the road to see Horsetail Falls. There were scantily clad people all over the rocks, in the water, and on the pathways. It was 100 degrees outside and the Portland-ites were escaping the city to take a dip in the freezing waterfalls. We stood in the crowd and admired the cascading horsetail (which, a plaque informed us, is both the name of that specific waterfall as well as a type of waterfall wherein the water is in contact with the rocks for most of the way as it falls).

Jeff and Amber, slowly melting on the sidelines. How did I get these pictures without the hoards of people in the background?

After 15 or 20 minutes at the horsetail, we walked through the heat along the side of the road back to the car and continued on our way. The crowds and the heat helped us decide to skip our hike and go straight into Portland for our favorite Indian food cart. I packed the kids PBJ for lunch, but Jeff and I were feeling rather hollow when we finally found some food trucks downtown around 2pm. I jumped out and located the Real Taste of India while Jeff circled around in the van. I ordered us food and watched the odd mix of people while waiting for my order. There was a guy with dreadlocks eating out of a nearby trash can. There was a group of tatooed teenagers laughing loudly. There were heavy wafts of body odor. There was a limping bearded fellow asking incoherently for spare change. I was getting the creeps! The block had a completely different vibe than it did the last time we visited over two years ago. Jeff said he spotted a number of gentlemen's clubs while he was circling. When I finally paid the cranky Indian lady for our big bag of steaming naan, makkani chicken, and goa curry, I was very ready to leap back into the safety of our van. I'm such a small town girl! As we were wending our way out of the busy city center, we saw another block full of food trucks with an identical "Real Taste of India" truck on it--that explained a lot! We had somehow landed in a...seedier district this time around. Whew.

We tried to find a park so we could let the kids romp while we sat in the shade enjoying fine Indian cuisine, but even the parks were crowded so we ended up starting the drive back home. Since the kids don't share our love of spicy curry, we planned to stop to get them ice cream on the way home, to make the trip feel special for them too. They were set on Dairy Queen of all places, so we pulled over at a DQ. I sat and relished the irony that we were three hours away from home at none other than a Dairy Queen getting ice cream when one of the only restaurants in Grandview is Dairy Queen! Jay and Rose enjoyed their ice cream. Jeff and I enjoyed our makkani and goa curry. Amber enjoyed a banana and bites of ice cream, plastic wrappers and napkins.

Before we left Dairy Queen for the 3 hour trek home, I took Amber to the bathroom to change her messy everything. There was no changing table in the bathroom! There wasn't even a counter top--the sink was a pedestal. There was no surface in the bathroom to lay a baby. So I went into the biggest stall and performed an epic feat of motherhood: the standing diaper change. The baby wasn't standing--I was! I held Amber firmly in one arm while she wriggled and managed to remove her diaper and banana-coated clothes, holding her body away from me on my arm. Then I wiped her and somehow clamped a diaper crookedly back onto her uncooperative little bottom. In order to put her spare dress on, I ended up holding her between my knees (I was still standing in the bathroom stall) and quickly pulling the dress over her head while hoping I didn't squeeze that banana right out of her tummy in the process! Next time I think I'll just change her in the van, 101 degree heat and all. 

We drove drove drove all the way home. When the kids started throwing things at each other and squealing, we popped in a movie. It's weird listening to a movie without watching it. But we made it home 9.5 hours after we left. Normally long pointless drives stress me out, but anything for Indian food!