Miriam at nine months

It being the last day of July and having written only seventeen posts, I thought it fitting that I write a little bit more. The truth is that we've been busy--busy unpacking and busy having fun. I also noticed that a lot of the posts this month were about Rachel, so to be fair this one will be dedicated to Miriam because, as we all know, life should be fair, right? Actually, I'd better come right out and say that's a fallacy lest anyone think I actually think that and lest any of my children think that I'm capable of making life "fair." Fair is tricky because it changes based on your station in life, your perception, your gratitude, your attitude, and a whole lot of other factors. So this post isn't really about being fair. It's just about Miriam so we can remember what she was like when she was nine months old.

We'll start with the big news: Miriam started hands-and-knees crawling the day after Sarah's wedding, on July 17th.
As soon as she go that all figured out she conquered the stairs and now we're constantly worrying about where around the house we're going to find her and have busted out all sorts of incarcerating equipment. She is a rather speedy crawler, though Grandpa, or Bumpa Weed as some of us like to say, jokes that she must have had a stroke because instead of crawling on two hands and two knees, she uses two hands, one knee, and one foot. She pushes off the floor with her right foot and kind of drags her left leg in a regular crawling fashion.

She can pull herself up on furniture and cruises all over the place but refuses to take steps while holding onto anyone's hands. She'll either crumple to the floor so you have to put her down or will turn around and nearly force you to pick her up. It's not that she can't walk, it's just that she won't walk. I'm in no rush to have her running around, though, since she's always off quietly getting into things, anyway. I can't imagine what she'd be doing if she could walk. No, that's a lie. I can imagine what she'd be doing because her older sister was walking at ten months and that was kind of crazy.

Miriam likes to suck her thumb still--only ever the left thumb, although she's been branching out to whole fists recently as she is teething again. Last week, after a few miserable nights in a row, I had taken Miriam to the mother's lounge at church for a little nursie and left her on my lap while I got ready. She arched her back, dangling her head between my knees, and let out an impatient wail. I got an excellent look into her mouth and saw some very swollen gums with little teeth buds just waiting to burst through. We're still actually waiting on those teeth.

At first we thought she was going to be a little vampire baby, like me, because her eye teeth were the ones that seemed to be poking through. Now that it's been a week, though, her front teeth seem to have surfaced more so I'm not sure what's going to come through first. Maybe all four like Rachel. Oh, the agony. Miss Miriam is not a good teether.

She is pretty good about her potty, though. Every morning she sits on the potty after breakfast and does her stinky business and then she's usually good for the rest of the day. I try to put her on every now and then to let her pee but she pees so stinking often that I end up changing a lot of wet diapers, anyway.  Rachel has been pushing me to teach Miriam signs and will help sign "potty" and "more" to Miriam, as well as a few other signs. So far she hasn't signed anything back, although she has started waving bye-bye. And hello.

When Miriam gets excited she pumps both arms up and down while almost hyperventilating. She also almost hyperventilates if someone is eating and she isn't. The other day Rachel was eating a banana and Miriam crawled right up on her to get a bite, breathing excitedly the whole time. She doesn't really bite food yet--she still sucks on it--so the banana got gross pretty fast. I had to steal a bit of it to mash up for her, which Rachel wasn't very happy about.

Miriam likes to crawl away from people and for them to chase her. She also likes to crawl toward people and have them crawl toward her. And by people I mean Rachel. And sometimes Momma. And I think Grandma might do this, too, but I'm not sure. We're trying to get her to catch on to peek-a-boo but she isn't patient enough to hide for long enough, lifting and dropping the blanket faster than we can say the words.

She likes music and will sing and dance bounce along with the beat. She also likes to do that thing where you move your lips with your fingers and make a blu-blu-blu sound. She does it when she's excited and she does it when she's perplexed. She also likes to make other people do it, either by manually manipulating their face or by doing it to herself until they join in. Then she gets this big grin on her face that says, "I'm communicating!"

She loves to pull books off the shelf and climb on the dishwasher and on boxes and on stairs and on toys and on anything else she can. She can often be found hanging out under the table eating scraps of food off the ground. We've caught her with rocks in her mouth, her cheeks full of nuts, and I once found a sticker stuck to the roof of her mouth. I won't tell you what we've seen come out in her diaper.

She's still a little snuggle bug and gives lovely hugs and kisses. She has the sweetest sounding voice and is adding more and more syllables to her...syllabary...everyday. I'd say vocabulary but I really don't think she says anything with meaning yet. Except maybe "mama," but that might just be because I'm vain.

Her hair is getting a lot longer but is so blonde that she still looks rather bald, but it's long enough now that I can put barrettes in it and short enough that I don't have to!

I'm trying to think if that's everything...oh! She loves this little stuffed monkey of Andrew's that we found in a box we were unpacking (unfortunately, Rachel does as well so it's source of contention). You know those ones with the long arms and legs that velcro together so the monkey can hang from things? It's one of those and when it's offered to her she grabs it in a big hug and loves it until it's yanked away from her by Rachel. And then she cries.

This particular monkey's name was originally Affe, the German word for monkey because Andrew got it at some zoo in Seattle when he was taking German in junior high...he wasn't in Seattle taking German...he just happened to go to Seattle while he was a student of German...anyway, he's trying to get the name Qird (قرد) to catch on now (it's Arabic for monkey) but Rachel insists that its name is George.

So that's our Miriam in a nutshell. She's adorable and we love her.