9 months old....yesterday!

Anna has now officially been outside of my body for as long as she was in it. What a difference a little girl makes. She is the free candy bar of my Halloween, the stocking of my Christmas morning, the cheese on my pizza, and the first Rose of spring after a long winter.

She is also the most feisty little girl I have ever known. She talks to her self almost as much as I talk to myself. She crawls laps around the kitchen table for exercise and she likes to touch the water in the toilet bowl (already caught her twice today)
She is a natural in front of the camera. I am sure if Nikon could have this picture, she would be signing endorsement deals right now.
She eats everything we have ever given her. She loves pretzels and apples and yogurt, but she also does not discriminate against wood chips, lint, stickers, books, cameras, remote controls, and grocery store advertisements-- they all go in her mouth.
Anna has no fear. IN fact, she thinks she is invincible (she shared this with me the other day). She tries to climb everything and so far she has shown zero "stranger danger." I am sure if anyone tried to attack her, she could bite the living daylights out of any of them.
The only time that Anna will cuddle is when she is "poor" (a code word for anything that makes Anna sad-- falling off a pew, having a book dropped on her head, eating cayenne pepper...) or when she is extremely tired. I cherish those moments when she actually lays her head on my shoulder-- probably 1% of her waking life.
We call her Anna the explorer. She wants to see and do everything. And as long as she can, she is supremely happy.
She is also quite limber (see photo above). She is working toward making the Olympic team in 2024.
This is her dramatic face pose. I tried a similar pose on my wedding day and I didn't carry it off quite as well.

This is one of the few pictures I have where Anna actually stayed where I put her down. She is too busy being Anna to make time for my little photo project. But I guess if my goal was to document what Anna was like at 9 months, then I have succeeded



She looks very much like Richard in this photo. The same face. Otherwise in personality, she is a mini-me.

Anna is growing so fast. From our calculations, she should top out somewhere around 6 feet 2 inches or so. She is already almost 3o inches tall and weighs 21 lbs.

Happy 9 months little one!