Nine months old

It is hard to believe that Kate is now nine months old. It has gone by so fast! Many changes seem to have happened right when she turned nine months old. For starters, she is now standing up in her crib. It is the cutest thing to see her standing up when we walk into her room in the morning or after a nap. On the flip side, she wants to stand up and play instead of sleeping! So that has brought on new challenges. We can now start finger foods with her, so she has been introduced to cheese, crackers, and cheerios. It is so neat to watch her experience food for the first time. We just watch her face scrunch up and then smile as she tastes new things and new textures. She also started crawling on all fours instead of army crawling. She is all over the place! I know I have said it before, but she just loves Dixie. She will laugh harder at Dixie then anything or anyone else. Dixie is starting to warm up to letting Kate pet her more. I think it helps that we have taught Kate how to pat not pull on her fur. Poor Dixie! Dixie has not nipped at Kate at all, even when she has yanked her fur hard enough to make her yelp.
We have now put Kate in her big high chair to eat instead of her little travel chair.
Kate seems to always be babbling. She especially loves to say Da,da,da,da I think it helps that we have a dog named Dixie that she loves along with her Daddy. I know it will just be a matter of time before she is saying Daddy. She still has the same percentages she did at her last appt. 75 percent length, 75 percent head, 25 percent weight.
I have posted some pictures of these changes. She is now riding in the shopping cart. She also is sitting in the high chairs at restaurants. Kamara and I celebrated our 31st birthday at Abuelos, one of our favorite restaurants. Since we were little girls we have loved to get 2 cheese enchiladas, 1 beef taco, and rice and beans. It started with Panchos, and yes I love Panchos! However, Abuelos is my favorite
Mexican restaurant. I feel so blessed to have a twin sister to experience everything with. Everything is more fun having Kamara go through it with me. We also had a birthday celebration at my parents house where for 31 years we have blown out candles together. My Mom made a delicious Italian cream cheese cake. As you can see from my forehead I have a big scratch. I am a big dork because I scratched myself doing a P90X workout. I looked in the mirror and had this big gash. So I told Zack he could call me Harry Potter. Zack's parents also had a nice birthday celebration for me at their house when were in Abilene. I wish I had pictures of the amazing chocolate cakes that Debbie made for me. One of them being the family favorite, Aunt Dora cake. I felt very loved by all of my family. Then Zack surprised me with a cake at small group. Way to go Zack, I did not expect that! Again no pictures of that either. I am just all around blessed.
I tried to put sunglasses on Kate and she hated it. As you can see, she liked it when I took them off!
You can also see that Kate likes to look out the window, just like Dixie. She also likes to look in the mirror. It was so cute, one day we watched her look at herself in the mirror, and give herself a kiss.
We had a great time going to our neighborhood park where Kate got to go on the big slide with Daddy. Zack is a great Dad!
I am posting some video footage of Kate crawling. As you can see Dixie walks away when she comes around. I know I have included a lot in this email, but a lot has been going on.