Has it really been 9 months?

Sniff, Sniff.  He's so grown up, he'd rather go party with his friends on his birthday than hang out with mom and dad!

Ian and I shake our heads at this...in some ways it seems Marshall has been with us forever, in others, it seems like yesterday that we were cleaning his belly button and spending all day in bed feeding and napping.

So at 9 months, Marshall is capable of eating seven bananas a day.  Some days it seems like all he wants to eat, but I think he likes them most because he is quite capable of feeding them to himself(and our clothes, the floor, the couch...).  He has started making new noises that kind of sound like his own personal Slavic language, lots of glottal sounds that we can't quite replicate unless we have something sticky in our throats.  He loves his bath and there is no better Marshall than the one at around 8pm, just fresh out of his bath wrapped in his towel.  He laughs and throws his arms up in the air with glee.  

Marshall is also into everything, still.  Just when we think we've corralled him in with safe toys and such, we find him with something in his hand/mouth that might have us turned into CPS in the states.  Keeps us on our toes for sure.  He really likes my cell phone, a plastic ladle and the plastic casing from packages of batteries.  And pretty much anything he shouldn't have.

We're asked by many of you who read this blog if he is always as happy as he seems in his pictures.  The answer is generally, and remarkably, yes!  One disclaimer though, Marshall typically smiles so big at the camera because he thinks the blinking light on front and from the flash are really cool, so by association, when the camera comes out, he lights up.  That being said, maybe once a week do we get a baby who is upset that cannot be consoled and that is typically for a short period of time when he's wanting two things at once: to eat and sleep, to play and sleep...and he doesn't really like his diaper being changed for some reason(I think because it involves staying still for a minute).  But overall, give him food when he's hungry, a nap when he's tired and a toy or a silly face when he' playful and he'll give lots of smiles, laughs and Slavic pronouncements of love until the cows come home.

We are expecting walking anytime and he's crawling with his belly off the ground.  He loves it when you get on the floor and crawl with him.  He automatically laughs and says something important in Slavic and leads you to his next destination.  He's secure, confident, happy and healthy and that makes us so proud to realize that we've done a decent job these first nine months.  Only 17 years and 3 months more to go, right?