Life on the Space Coast: 9 months

I'm a little late with this, but Arthur turned 9 months old on the 4th! His checkup isn't until later in the month so I don't know how big he is officially yet, but he is definitely a growing boy! He mostly wears 12 month or 12-18 month clothes, though some of his 12 month clothes are starting to be too tight if he's wearing his cloth diapers. He now has his 4 front teeth, tons of hair, and a huge personality! Here are just a few of the times he has made me laugh in the past few days.

Yesterday I ran some errands by myself and came home to find Arthur looking at a book on the floor. He saw me and his face broke out into a huge smile and he started army crawling towards me as fast as he can go. He got part way to me and then turned around, grabbed the book he had been reading, and brought it to me. He wanted me to read him the book! He sat in my lap and we read it 3 times in a row. And he didn't even want to stop then - the boy LOVES books! Here are some of his favorites if you want recommendations.
His new favorite game is to be chased! If he thinks that I'm going to pick him up, he giggles and starts crawling away as fast as possible. He even does this in his crib, which is pretty funny because it's not like he can go far!
The other day I was giving him a bath and he peed. He looked down and watched the little fountain he was making and was extremely interested in this new discovery. He thought it was hilarious, and spent the rest of the bath looking down and waiting for it to happen again.
Last night I was giving him a bath and he was playing with a cup. I put out my hand and said, "Can you hand me the cup?" After saying this several times he smiled and handed me the cup. This went back and forth for a while and I called Hunter in to see it. Arthur handed me the cup again, and then Hunter put out his hand and said, "Can you hand the cup to Dada?" Arthur grabbed the cup, giggled a lot, and crawled away from Hunter as fast as he could. Of course he could only go like 2 feet because he was in the bath, but he made his point! He has quite the sense of humor!
He is all over the place now, and of course sometimes we have things lying around that he shouldn't get into. The other day I was fixing dinner and Arthur started crawling right up to a tool that had been left out that he shouldn't touch. He was clearly going for it. I used my stern voice and said, "Arthur, no touch." He stopped about a foot away from it, looked up at me, and smiled his biggest smile. I didn't smile back and I kept saying, "No touch." He kept smiling at me, like he was trying to get me to smile back, and when it didn't work he finally moved on and didn't touch it! I just *know* that if I had smiled back at him, he would seen that as permission to touch it.
His list of potential words ("Is he really saying that? Or am I just imagining it? Was that just a coincidence?") is growing. There's now "nana" for banana (that one is pretty consistent), "dada" (he seems to just say this when Hunter is around), "mama" (though this seems to mean food, not me), and "bah" for ball. "Eh-nor" (Eleanor) and "eh-che" (leche) have disappeared. I remember Eleanor doing that too - she would use a word for a month and we would be all excited about it and then not hear it again for 3 or 4 months.
Arthur is LOUD. I love him and his hilarious personality, but I really, really wish that he had a volume knob sometimes. Usually when he starts getting loud it's because he's tired or hungry, but sometimes he just starts screaming when he's frustrated with a toy or book.

How my baby sleeps