Life

DJ is nine months old now. He is learning new things all the time. Most of which are better ways to get into everything. He now climbs on things, pulls things off of shelves, opens cupboards, pulls himself up on everything and cruises around. It kind of reminds me of when we were little and we used to play don't touch the ground, how we would jump from furniture to furniture. He pulls himself up on one thing, walks the length of it, then precariously transfers himself to the next available piece of furniture, walks along that, then moves on to the next piece of furniture. He can get clear across the living room like that. He does however need a hand getting from the coffee table over to the TV stand, and that's literally all he needs. I offer him one hand which he uses to stabilize himself as he takes the two steps it takes to get across, then he lets go and continues on his way.
He likes to chase things around on the ground. He'll push a ball, or one of his plastic stacking rings across the ground in front of him while he crawls after it, the whole time laughing hysterically. He still doesn't really crawl. He just scoots around on his belly pulling himself along with his elbows, he's gotten quite fast though. This morning he followed a ball out of the living room and down the hall where I couldn't see him anymore. I called for him to come back, but of course he didn't listen to me. After a couple of minutes I went to see where he had gone, and I found him in the bathroom standing at the side of the bathtub trying with all his might to pull himself up into it. He does love his baths.
He has two teeth now and he keeps biting me with them. I don't know what to do about that. He's been putting bite marks all along the edge of the coffee table. All of his toys, everything, goes straight to his mouth where he gnaws on them mercilessly.
He's a very active kid who never wants to sit still. I've been having a hard time with him at church. He doesn't want to sit on my lap, or on a bench, he's only happy if he can crawl around on the ground. So I let him for the most part, because it's the only way to keep him happy, but then he goes after people's scriptures and bags, and feet, and any other random thing that happens to be on the ground and I am constantly pulling him back trying to keep him from getting anything. He'll sit still and look at a book for about a minute and a half, but sacrament meeting is a lot longer than that. Sunday School is usually entirely spent fighting with him to take a nap. He gets so exhausted and grumpy and he obviously wants to sleep, but there is nothing that I can do to get him to sleep. Dean does a lot better getting him to sleep, but not until after I have thoroughly exhausted him.
Dean and I have been reading the Harry Potter books together. Or rather, I've been reading them to him. We want to finish the series before the seventh movie comes out in November. We read in the car whenever we drive anywhere and in the evenings after DJ is in bed. I've been enjoying it. We just started the fifth book, so hopefully we'll be able to finish them all in time.
We're probably going to be moving to northern New York in November or December, but all of that is kinda up in the air right now. We don't know where we'll be or what we'll be doing. Our future is extremely uncertain right now. We're hoping to know for sure by the beginning of October, but who knows really. Dean is really hoping to get out of the unit that he's in now. He's in an aviation unit, but I guess the brigade he's in has no aviation, so when he's not deployed he's just running errands and doing other things that no one else wants to do. He's also on a rotation of 24 hour duty shifts that is three or four times as much as anyone else has to do, and he really doesn't think that is fair, but as long as he is in this unit that's what he has to do, and he is miserable. He's really hoping that this move will go through as quickly as possible.