River is 9 months old.

We did her photo shoot at The Train Depot this afternoon after lunch. She is wearing a dress passed down from Kas.
She is getting so big and doesn't seem much like a baby anymore. She has the best smile around and completely lights up the room with it. Everywhere we go people adore her. The past month has brought lots of new things.
She loves to eat and has an open mouth begging for each bite!
A few of her new foods are crackers, dry Kix + Cheerios, apricots, peaches, yogurt melts, granola, raisins, pureed carrots, turkey, avocado, hard rolls.
She doesn't like anything with chunky carrots in it and spits it out as pictured below.
She also doesn't care for mashed potatoes.
She LOVES ice!

She had her first popsicle by the pool.

She loves the pool!

She adores her sister something fierce! And the feelings are mutual. Flower is the only one that can make her laugh. The scary thing is that it's getting head butted in the stomach or head that make her laugh the hardest, but only by Flower. Silly baby. Although she is a sole player and is less fussy when left alone, she loves to follow Flower where ever she goes. She also likes to be in her crib when Flower's in her bed.
She loves to crawl laps up and down the hall way and is very fast!
Spins around to go the other way...
and then does another lap. She also constantly follows us up and down this hall all day long! I love that.
She has recently developed a liking for the pig my dad gave her in the hospital at birth. It's so cute to watch her be loving towards it. She drags it along and stops to give it cuddles and kisses.



Her little personality has really shown through this week. She is so affectionate and the way she shows it is adorable. She grabs your face to give you kisses. She will grab your head and just put her open mouth on your hair. She will gently pull at your hair while sighing or caressing your face. Sometimes it's just so random and cute.
She is also becoming mischievous. She thinks it's great fun to pull the wipes out as fast as she can until she gets caught.

Then after getting caught she grabs one and violently shreds it with her teeth and hands.
Speaking of teeth. She has 6.

With those six teeth she thinks it's awesome to annoy the crud out of me by grinding them together. Not kidding when I say you can hear it across the room. Awful sound. Ack!!!

She is mastering the sippy cup.
She gets herself from a seated position to a standing position on her own and loves to stand and show off.



She's not opposed to clapping for herself. She loves to clap.

She walks. Her longest stint is nine steps but she does two or three all day long. And you can't stand her up to make her do it because if you're hanging on to her that's her cue to bounce. She has to stand up on her own and then take off.
Says mama to me. This melts my heart. It also breaks my heart when she does it from her crib because she wants out.

Loves to scrape her teeth on our toes.

She gets so freaking excited when you walk through the door and run crawls to you squealing. Such a great welcome home.

She loves shoulder rides and our hair is her handles. Ouch.

Just yesterday she got the concept of peekaboo. She was using a napkin at the restaurant to cover her face and pull it away and then would giggle when we'd all yell PEEK-A-BOO!

She is an awesome sleeper. I've gotten lucky with both girls. Flower, at 4, still takes a nap in the afternoon. River takes a one hour nap two hours after waking in the morning. She takes another nap around 2:00 that lasts one to two hours. Depending on how long that nap is she'll sometimes take another short nap around 6 or 7. Then goes to bed between 9 or 10 and sleeps till 9 the next morning. Love her! She still covets her white blanket and binky at sleep time.


She gets very excited to see people she loves and reaches for them happily.
She is so curious and never stops moving.


We just completely adore this girl and cannot be more grateful to have her in our lives.