Arthur, Month Nine

Arthur is nine months old! And he continues to work on standing and walking, slowly but surely moving towards the day he can walk on his own.

But the biggest news of all: Arthur said his first word! Or words, technically. During his bath time last week, he identified his favorite bath toy as "a duck." A few days later I captured it on video.

He says "a duck" most clearly at about 10 seconds in.

Now, there was some debate as to whether he was "really" saying this word or just repeating after me, so last night I performed a test: I held up the rubber bath duck in silence and right away he exclaimed "a duck!" So I am therefore declaring "duck" to be his first word. (You may remember that Beatrice's was "dog.")

Whether or not Arthur really means it when he says "a duck," he certainly loves babbling, vocalizing, and repeating sounds, much more so than Beatrice did as an infant. He repeats "dog" and "hi" and he also waves, laughs, and responds to pointing. He and his sister have even created their own form of communication which consists of making weird sounds to one another and then laughing hysterically at them.

In other news, Arthur has a newfound interest in balls - in fact, lately all he wants to do is throw balls, roll them, catch them, and chase them. His favorite activity is to toss a ball away from himself, go crawling off after it, pick it up, and repeat again and again.

Throwing a football

He is also a great fan of sandboxes and has finally, finally learned not to eat the sand. Most of the time.

Racing through the sandbox with Beatrice

Arthur continues to expand his culinary horizons - now he eats more and more real (that is, non-pureed) foods like small pieces of chicken, ground beef, tofu, cheese, bread, vegetables, and fruits, though he still doesn't have any teeth and his habit of cramming his mouth full of food and then gagging on it all means that I'm always on the edge of my seat watching him eat. We'll weigh him at his checkup appointment tomorrow, but he remains pretty skinny, despite his love of pancakes, macaroni and cheese, and bagels.

Playing drums at baby gym

Arthur break-dancing at Machine Project's event Infantcore, in which he was an enthusiastic participant