The Baby has now been out of the belly approximatelyas long as she was in it, as she turned nine months old on the first of the month. Although the time while pregnant sometimes seems to drag on and on, especially the last month or so, the time she was born has flown by. With the first child, you have a bit of time to watch them and alternately marvel at each stage or wonder if they will ever get out of whatever bad habit they've developed.

By the third child you have little time to wonder, marvel or worry. You know they'll eventually learn to sleep, stop biting, etc. with a bit of time and patience training, but you also don't get to pay as much attention to each interesting thing. Time flies past. The days are filled.

I still take some time to look at this third tiny little person in our house and wonder at how remarkable she is. She's a bundle of energy and curiousity. We call her explorer girl. Under close supervision, she's climbed straight up our flight of 21 steps (and her siblings know on pain of torture that the gate to those stairs is to be kept shut at all times). Sometimes I'll be in one part of the house and discover that she has crawled out of the room, down a hall, around a corner and to the other end of the downstairs, just to check out the variety of dog hair and toilet paper we're keeping over there.

Her paper eating skills and book ripping skills are legendary, but so is her grin and the smiles are enough to forgive almost every gnawed on book or soggy unrolled strip of shredded toilet paper.

She's pulling up and cruising. Sometimes holding only lightly with one hand. A few weeks ago, she let go of a chair and tried to step over to me. I couldn't quite contain the giggle when she fell flat on her face, and yet letting go and falling really is a step towards actually stepping out and walking. I don't fear walking though. It's talking and the constant barrage of "MOM" that scares me. Recently she's begun babbling in an almost meaningful way. I'm not exactly ready to call in talking, though when people grin at her or enter a room, she'll look at them and softly say, "Hi." Sometimes she raises her arms, grins and yells, "Yay!" Those "words" are sweet. If only she'd stop there.

Right now she seems more content and less inclined, by a little, to insist on doing everything by herself than her sister was at this age. I wonder though, when watching her in action, if we might be seeing another high spirited monkey. The Middle Girl is wonderful, but I'd really be happy to only have one of them.

Today we went to The Baby's nine month check-up. She's right on target develomentally and her hemangioma seems to have stopped growing and based on the coloring might actually already be involuting. I am waiting, not very patiently for it to disappear. For all she seems oversized in activity and personality, she's a tiny little thing reaching only the 15th percentile for height and somewhere between the 25th and 50th percentiles for weight. Although I am slightly taller than average for a woman, I seem to be growing itty bitty girls.

Since I don't always get to sit around and watch all the activity and take in every new milestone as I would like, I do enjoy taking pictures. Maybe in twenty years or so, I'll get a chance to look back and see all the changes I missed in the thick of things.