Sissy at 9 months

I'm beginning to think we should have named this dear child Sissy instead of Evelyn. Someone called her Evelyn the other day and it sounded so foreign. Sissy Denbrook has a nice ring to it, right? I mean, we live in Wyoming where people name their children all sorts of strange names so maybe we should just go for it?

This delight of a child is now nine months old. I would like to think that it is due to my superb parenting that she is the way she is, but alas I do believe it has not much to do with me, or what I do or don't do. This girl is just a dream boat of a baby. She's the baby that makes people who do not want babies, baby hungry. And she will probably be a terror of a toddler, but for now I will soak up all of her goodness- all 28.5 inches and 17 lbs of it.

She is one happy camper who loves to race crawl across the living room floor while shrieking or making other noises to show her excitement. She pulls herself up on low furniture and has fallen off numerous things way too many times. She eats whatever you put in front of her and loves that big brother of hers whole heartedly. She stills sleeps in our closet ( now, now it's a large closet with its own heat source) because she's my last baby and I want her close. Forever.

Bath time and eating cheerios are two of her favorite past times as well as taking every last magnet off of the refrigerator. Seriously, whose brilliant idea was it to make all those educational Leap Frog  magnet toys and why do I have them on my fridge at her level?

She also enjoys exploring the bathroom and all I can say about that is thank you Jesus for immune systems and that the toilet brush has found a permanent new home.

Big brother Henry is a great helper and is quick to grab tiny choke-ables out of her chubby hands, and is also quick to lift her onto the couch when my back is turned.

Life with these two is never dull, at times trying and always a reminder if what is truly important in life! That being said...a TV without scratches isn't really that important, right?

One day there will be jumping.

And possibly one day there will also be Christmas cards sent out of said jumping.

Until then, here are some of our recent attempts at a family photo. There was no jumping and unlike photo ops before, no strangling of babies. And no real winners either.

We call this, "someone forgot to put mittens on the baby and it's -15..."

And this one, "we are too tall and that's a really ugly background + where is mom's body?"

Then we have the look of disgust on mom's face and the escaping toddler.

And finally everyone is looking at the camera and smiling, but is that the head of a wild animal above Jake's head?