Month 7: Ingestion Update

(Sorry, but that's the most creative title I could think up for: "Here's what Daniel's been eating lately"...) Starting just after he turned six months, we dove into the brand new world of baby food. A little scary, a lot messy, and a ton of fun.

As of now, Daniel's breakfast is a small bottle along with oatmeal & prunes - which he eats in man-sized portions. Lunch #1 is fruit & a bottle and lunch #2 is a different fruit (or vegetable) and a bottle. Dinner is brown rice and a vegetable, followed by a bath, followed by a bedtime bottle. Snacks along the way include little sweet potato puffs or a small bite of whatever fruit Mommy is snacking on.

As for preferences, we started out ok with green beans, but by the end of that week he turned up that cute little nose to those poor beans. Peas were an ABSOLUTE no, but the rest were great - carrots, squash and sweet potatoes. He got a little stomach bug during the carrots week, and he pooped watery orange for quite a few days. (The really bad part of that story is he gave me that bug, and all I could stomach was blue gatorade. You can imagine how colorful my trips to the bathroom were...)

In other non-nutritive news, his vocal skills are becoming entirely amusing. He's definitely doing more immitation - number of syllables and type of sound. He seems to pick a particular sound for a day or two and just practice non-stop. "Mah" "Dah" "Ba" - that's his recent favorite. I actually think he may be using it with meaning: "Ba-ba" for bottle... it's not every time, but frequently when he's hungry, he'll cry/whine "baaaa - baaaaa". Pretty cute.

Personally, my favorite types of conversations with him are the non-verbal ones. Take for example - the raspberry conversation. This intellectually stimulating encounter consists of Daniel blowing a raspberry for a few seconds, then the second party following suit. Then Daniel. Then the second party. It can last as long as twenty minutes ... something I don't think the adult tongue was meant to do, as mine is usually numb after these conversations.

Daniel's recent favorite is a fake cough conversation - back and forth, back and forth. I think he learned the fake cough from a little girl in his preschool class (definitely not as bad as the fake scream he learned from a different little girl). The fake coughing usually leads to real coughing though, so it's not quite as much fun as the raspberries.

All sore throats aside, I will never forget the first time we had a "cough" chat - in the bathtub, about to get out, and Daniel fake coughed. I replied. He looked up at me and giggled. He coughed. I coughed. He laughed outloud, and put his little hand on my cheek. I think we coughed and laughed for a good ten minutes, soaking wet and naked in the lukewarm tub water. It was one of those "oh please let time stop RIGHT NOW so I can never leave this moment" moments.

(Also one of those "better remember this forever cause there's NO WAY we're taking a picture of this moment" moments :).

As a closing note, I believe I forgot to mention that Daniel's third and fourth teeth arrived - together, top and center. I thought he couldn't get any cuter - but I was wrong - he's hilariously ferocious with four teeth, and that much more determined to stick things in his mouth.

The difference is that before, he'd just kind of suck on whatever was in his mouth - now he bites. Hard. We need to invest in a little "warning" sign and mount it to his chin. Just in case people have never seen a four-toothed monkey before.