Elijah

Elijah is probably the most flexible child I know.  Everyone remarks on how smiley he is.  He is adjusting to his new home very well and I think he is very happy living in Zambia.  He will sleep anywhere, and as long as he has his mama, he is happy.  It is hard to believe that he is almost 9 months old already!  (He will be 9 months the day after tomorrow.)

He has a very toothy smile now, with 4 teeth on the top and 4 on the bottom.   And his newest passion is feeding himself - so every  meal must include finger food now.

He is very active -- sitting up unassisted, pulling up on things and trying to stand, walking with assistance, and crawling everywhere!  His newest trick is to crawl from room to room, following me while I am working, and when I stop he catches up to me and pulls my skirt! He is becoming a menace to anything that is within his reach, so the word "no" is becoming increasingly familiar.  I am happy to say that thus far he is a very responsive and obedient child, although he has his moments of boundary-pushing. He has also become very vocal and is forming real sounds now, so our days are full of "ba ba ba" and "da da da."

It is so fun to watch him interacting more and more with his environment, but he does get a nasty bump on the head every now and then.  It's the painful part of development.  This week he gave us both a horrible scare when he fell down the two front steps in his walker.  He landed on his head but by God's grace he was amazingly unhurt except for a scrape and some bruising on his head.  We are so indescribably thankful for the Lord's merciful protection, recognizing that it could have been SO much worse!  But it was a traumatic and very scary moment for all of us.  I think I cried as much as he did!  He really keeps us all on our toes.