December

December is one of the best months of the year! It was fun watching Carter discover all of the Christmas decorations and which ones he liked to pull down the most. His favorite was playing with all the fun ornaments on our little tree and pulling it down to the ground so he could reach all the other ones. He also liked to try opening presents under the tree.

Carter has been seeming so grown up lately and it has been fun to see more of his personality develop. I'm starting to think this might be my favorite baby stage. We've snapped so many pictures of him lately, I might have a bit of a picture overload.

he LOVES bath time

especially with daddy 

he also loves eating his socks???

he loves this whole crawling thing 

he loves wrestling with daddy

carter for the win - his deadly weapon ;)

he hasn't quite mastered moving from sitting up to laying down,
so he kind of just does both 

his new face that I LOVE so much!

he is so proud that he has mastered the child-proof plugs :/

Surprisingly this December was one of our less busy ones. We spent a lot of evenings at home - Carter and I watched Christmas movies while Brad studied for the GMAT. NEVER have your hubs take the GMAT around Christmas time, his need to study took away from some of the more simple moments of Christmas season. That was my bad - curse being an anxious woman sometimes :/

We did manage to do a few fun things out with friends. We continued our new tradition of going to the Festival of Trees with some of our good friends, Ash and TJ. Carter was so entertained at first, but totally crashed before the end.

the crew

Ash loves snuggling our sleeping baby boy

totally out 

We also attended a couple of Christmas parties and had a blast playing some of the games, exchanging white elephant gifts and getting "creative" with our ugly sweaters.

I also had the chance to do dinner with some of my best girl friends that got me through college. Of course we didn't take a picture of us together, but we did get a picture of these two love birds:

Carter's 9 month update:
Carter has finally gotten on a pretty regular sleeping routine and it is the BEST!!! I may or may not have cursed myself by saying that :/ He goes to bed around 7:00 and wakes up around 7:00 in the morning. He takes 2, 2-2.5 hour naps and sometimes an evening cat nap. He LOVES to eat! We have been slowly introducing him to more foods and he loves his puffs, yogurt melts, graham crackers, and mashed potatoes. He has learned the concept of clapping and likes to clap for himself, only when he's in the mood. He also gives the sweetest, wet, open-mouth kisses, but will only give them to mama :)
He has two little teeth on the bottom now, thank heavens! All those sleepless nights are paying off for him. He is babbling more new sounds and seems to be enjoying discovering new noises.