9 months old

Calista turned 9 months this past Tuesday. She has been doing lots of new things and is generally very happy these days. She is crawling around like crazy and exploring distant corners of the room. She has learned to clap, and gets very excited when she sees the cat. She's also eating quite a bit of "solid" food, and can manage to get cherios and other small items into her mouth. She can also pull herself up to standing using the couch, side of the crib, or the sliding glass door.

We enjoyed a rare day off from cross country yesterday, and took advantage of sunny, warm weather to go hiking. We went to Bull Run Mountain Preserve, an area just west from Manassas - the first line of mountains going west from DC in Virginia. There was a nice viewpoint at some rocks were we had lunch. Calista enjoyed riding in the backpack and checking out the sites and sounds.

I put some new pictures of the hike and Calista's recent exploits on Picasa. We still need to get a shot of her holding a "9 month" sign.