Happy 0.75!

This month, my sweet son turned 9 months old. Wow. I know that each month I say time flies by-but I mean it. If you are pregnant right now, or have a small baby-be warned. You are going to blink and your baby will be a big boy/girl! It is overwhelmingly exciting and wonderful to watch them grow, but slightly heartbreaking at the same time, and each stage has both challenges and wonderful joys!
This month more than any previous month, Ben has become very interactive. He has been smiling a lot and laughing, but now he is playing games with us. He loves to play peekaboo (he has liked this for a while, but now he is "hiding" and "finding" himself) and we just discovered a new game where he shakes his head back and forth ("no") and we tickle his tummy, he giggles, we stop, and he shakes his head again. He is DEFINITELY experimenting with cause and effect. If we do something in response to something he does (and he likes it) he is very likely to try again to see if his performing monkeys parents will do the same trick twice. It is so fun to play with him like this!
He has started demonstrating excitement when he sees a parent, which is so fun. :-) When he comes to see me at lunch, the biggest smile breaks over his face! And the same when he sees his daddy (this boy is head over heels, crazy in love with his daddy-seriously, he thinks his daddy is the best person in the WORLD! It's the sweetest thing...). He also looks for people if he doesn't see them (and I can ask him "where is daddy" and he will look for him in the places he normally is-smarty pants!).
He has started reaching for us and showing anxiety when we walk away. However, we can walk away if we keep talking to him and reassuring him we are coming back (if I put him down to go to the bathroom or something like that).
He is signing a little bit-mostly to nurse. Josh is signing with him, so hopefully soon we will see some other signs.
He can scoot/army crawl a bit, but isn't really crawling on hands and knees yet. He is sitting and will transition from sitting to tummy (though that scares me a bit on our hardwood floor). He isn't really pulling up either. The kid definitely prefers to be held, though we can now put him down to play for a while depending on his mood. I'm okay with this-I figure he will be all over the place before we know it and for now, I don't mind knowing that he will be approximately where I put him down when I come back to get him.
He is eating a wider variety of food-still mostly fruits and veggies, but occasionally he will want to self feed some cheerios or something similar. He definitely prefers foods with flavor (he would way rather eat a cooked carrot out of my soup/stew versus a regular cooked carrot).
Happy 0.75, baby son! We are SO incredibly blessed to take care of you every day!