Leela will be nine months old in two days. She's crawling all over the place like a little speed demon, pulling up on everything in sight, and loves to push a chair all over the kitchen and dining room floors. With all this physical activity, her weight gain has slowed down drastically, and she's really slimming down. She weighed 18 lbs. at 6 months and now she's only around 18.5 lbs.--she looks longer, though, so I guess she's growing in length instead of weight. About a month ago she started to really enjoy food. She wants to try everything and likes almost everything she tries--zuccini, rice cakes, carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, yogurt, cheese, puffed rice cereal (we just tried that today, and she loved it), apples, pears, black and pinto beans, broccoli, cauliflower, and even a raw red onion ring that she grabbed off my salad at a restaurant and refused to relinquish--she had onion breath for hours! She still gets most of her calories from breastmilk, though.
Leela continues to be very vocal. No words yet, but she says something resembling "yay!" when we clap our hands and say yay, and she kind of claps too, but with her fists. She'll also shake her head side to side when we do, which is totally cute and funny. She gets pretty ticked off when we take away stuff that's not safe to play with. But overall, she's a very joyful baby. She loves to ride in the back of the shopping cart and stand, holding onto the side, and smile at everyone and babble away.
She's also beginning to interact a lot more with her brother, and they play together really well at times.