Mae at 9 months

You can see from the picture what Mae's biggest achievement is: she started standing! We stayed at a hotel last weekend with the best thing she ever saw: a mirror to the floor that she could crawl right up to, see herself in, 'climb' up to standing and even lick! (Yes, all those smudges are from her). She's been pulling up on coffee tables, the couch and me and now can sit down by herself, too. And just today she 'cruised' sideways a few steps.

She is also crawling now- really crawling, not just the army crawl. She still isn't very fast but she is *very* pleased with herself for getting around. One time, Dave was putting Adi to bed in the nursery and he heard Mae giggling in the living room; when he went out to see what she had gotten into, he found her crawling down the hall toward the nursery, just happy she could get around. And now when I breast feed the girls, I bring Adi to my 'nursing station' and just call for Mae to come for milk-- she crawls over and pulls up on the pillow.

Her comprehension and motions have really taken off, too-- she waves 'hello' and 'goodbye', claps with hands flat enough to make a (small) sound, throws her arms up high to throw the patty cake in the oven. I think she is trying to make the sign for 'all done' although it looks a lot like 'so big' (and she hasn't used it except in mimicry yet, so it's not actually useful).

Oh- and we are convinced that she is actually saying a word. She chirps "hi!" when she sees herself in the mirror or, more rarely, when one of us walks in the room. There aren't many consonants in her speech yet but we have heard a few "ah-goo" sort of sounds.

And she remains exceptionally social. Last weekend we traveled to Boise, Idaho for the wedding of Dave's cousin Mandy and Mae positively thrived off the large number of people to wave at, smile at, sit with, be fed by, be held by, be bounced by, oh and did I forget to mention wave and smile at? She had a lot of fun with Grandma & Grandpa Coleman and all the aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and strangers.

Some more things I just thought of: When you ask Mae "What does a lion say" she growls. Then you ask "What does a duck say" and she growls again. Mean ducks around here! Sometimes she growls to say 'hi'.

She's also rolling a ball on the floor and although it looks random, it often comes straight to me. She still does have to stop to chew on it occasionally though.