lots of pics of 9-month-old Bean

... because she is so cute. Not that Sam isn't.

These days she pulls up to standing on everything, including her old bouncy seat (donated shortly after this picture was taken):



(Sam could not stay out of the frame for more than one picture.)

She walks, with help:




(isn't this outfit adorable? it was a gift from one of my mentors and his family. Sam calls her (Frida, that is) Mrs. Cow when she's wearing it. they're butterflies, in case it's not clear)

She crawls with no help:




And still thinks Sam is the awesomest thing ever:



And she often insists on feeding herself. Avocado and wetted-for-softening O cereal, here (the cheese was already gone). Anything uneaten on the tray gets pounded to a pulp with some enthusiastic sippy-cup whamming.



(Yes, I'm aware that food-covered babies on kid blogs are a cliche.) She's just started signing "all done" when she wants out of her high chair, though she'll often eat more within minutes. So we're offering food frequently, because she's at the 10th percentile for weight (as of her 9-month visit; 50th for length). Brainstorming fatty stuff that's baby friendly: cheese, avocado, salmon, full-fat yogurt, fat-soaked chicken bits... She eats, she would just rather be doing other stuff. Like standing--which she also insisted on doing in the bath last night. It's tricky bathing a slippery little standing Bean. Or yanking books off the shelf, ripping small pieces off of their covers, and eating said pieces. J's traveling every other week between now and the end of June. This should be interesting... two more baby gates are on order, to protect shoes and paperback book covers from Frida, and vice versa, so that I can turn my back for more than a minute at a time. For now if I'm cooking or showering she sits in the booster seat, either with food or with toys on the tray.

Sam update:
Sam's conversational skills seem to have made a leap recently. The other day on the way to school/work he was asking J. about J's work: "How do you divide your time between teaching and studying?" In that same conversation he recalled, from another convo with me weeks ago, the kinds of experiments we do, explaining that if you have one group of people and you tell them one thing, and then you have another group of people whom you tell something different, you then ask both groups to do the same thing, and watch to see if they do it differently... I was really surprised that he remembered that conversation at all, but he appears to have understood the idea of behavioral research. I never seem to have paper and pen, or even the handy little digital voice recorder my father gave me, handy when he's coming up with these insights, or to document his burgeoning vocabulary... will have to get better about that. It's fun, though. He's good company in general these days, though he has a hard time sticking to rules sometimes (e.g., he keeps trying to put Frida places she shouldn't be without an adult, like on the couch; he points out, correctly, that she likes it, and he's watching her carefully, but that doesn't mean it's ok, and I've had to re-emphasize this two or three times this weekend alone). But he can also be remarkably patient. Yesterday, after an early afternoon spent at Drumlin Farm hiking and looking at the animals and just enjoying the late-spring weather, Frida fell asleep in the car on the way home. When we got home, I ran in (leaving Sam to watch F. in the car, and then we had a snack on the front steps, next to the open-window'd car. After a bit, F. still miraculously sleeping, we headed to the park, but when we arrived she was still asleep. Moving the carseat wakes her up pronto, so we hung out in the car for a half hour (!) until she woke up on her own, first playing a few rounds of 20 questions, then writing on a handy piece of paper with a pen (see, I'm trying!) that I had in the car. He spelled out P-O-O-P and P-E and F-R-T (I corrected the latter two). Bathroom words are not allowed at school but we have no problem with them at home, which I am hoping means they will lose their allure sooner than later (but in the meantime, honestly, I am not bothered by them... interestingly, unlike friends of ours with small children similarly titillated by all things scatological). So we had a nice little bonding time, and I was very impressed by his patience, and then he climbed the big web at the park for the next 45 minutes.

Gratitude, more generally
On Friday I was reflecting on some of the awesome people we have in our lives, and feeling especially grateful for the two people who have most helped care for Sam and Frida this past academic year, both of whom feel have come to feel like younger cousins or even (in the latter case) sisters to me. Sam's old babysitter Karla picked him up from school for an end-of-semester (hers, that is) outing-- she wanted to see him once more before going home for the summer, so arranged to hang out for the afternoon. Karla emails me funny links (e.g., hot guys reading books), and forwards me petitions to sign; I look forward to watching her become ever more fabulous in the world. I have also been thinking a lot about our lovely, lovely nanny Stephanie, and how much we will miss her next year. She's totally on our wavelength in so many ways, is like a second mom to Frida and a good friend and teacher to Sam, and when I think about the fact that after the end of the summer she won't be here each morning any more, I get a lump in my throat. We've had a few long conversations over the past couple of weeks about her plans, and about a lot of aspects of life and child-raising and school, etc. I've been focusing very intentionally on being grateful that we (and especially F. and S.) have had her in our lives (rather than on being sad, that is).
Both of these young women are remarkably emotionally mature, comfortable with themselves, and present in interactions both with adults and with children. They share a certain groundedness, warmth, and sense of fun. (Sam actually really wanted them to meet each other, and had been telling Stephanie all week that he wanted her to get to know Karla...and he got his wish, though he wasn't there to enjoy it-- Stephanie forgot that Karla was picking Sam up, and bumped into her in the hallway outside his classroom just before class was over, and figured out who she was-- so they met just briefly before Stephanie took off to avoid confusing Sam.)

We're in touch with two of the several babysitters who watched Sam during his first year+: One who was our half-time nanny when Sam was 3 through 6 months, who's now a mom herself, and a prof (hi M!) and who blogs about her amazing and delightful newly-4-year-old. The other former babysitter with whom we're in contact also has a baby now, and is back in her native Thailand, finishing up her doctorate in nursing. It's funny: I always figured I would meet people through my kids, but for some reason I never imagined that I would meet so many wonderful people as their caregivers (funny, given that I did a fair bit of babysitting up through grad school, so it's not like I can't imagine interesting people in that role).

And finally, a Robin update:
Two of the three baby robins have fledged. We keep checking for them, though, worried about the neighborhood cats that occasionally frequent our yard. Here they are a few days ago (blurry, sorry):