One of the most exciting changes is that Andrew now eats food – real food! Since the very beginning, Andrew did not like purees. I had these images in my head of making all of his food – organic, homemade pureed fruits and vegetables. He wanted none of it! After many attempts to try to get him to eat my homemade food, we broke down and bought some packaged food, thinking it was the texture. Nope! He hated all of those also – we tried different brands, organic, non-organic, thicker, thinner, fruits, vegetables, everything. I had been reading online about this concept called “Baby Led Weaning” or “Baby Led Solids”, and it really intrigued me. Basically, the idea is that you give a baby whatever foods you are eating (within reason, of course) in manageable pieces that they can pick up and put in their mouth on their own. I was nervous at first, but I had read that babies have a really strong gag reflex – if they put something in their mouth that they can’t swallow, they will cough it back up. We started with puffs, which dissolve very quickly on contact with saliva. After he got the hang of puffs, we just started giving him tiny pieces of our food and he LOVED it! Apparently he is already like his daddy and likes to be in control! Now he seems to like any food we give him, as long as he can feed it to himself! He especially loves chicken and broccoli. It is so exciting to watch him eat – he’s so serious about it and he gets so excited whenever we start getting his food ready! I hope that he continues to love new foods as we introduce new things!
Another new and exciting thing that has happened in the past two months (really the past 3 weeks) is that Andrew has become mobile! The weekend that he turned 9 months old he began to go from a laying to a sitting position. One night I heard him crying on the monitor and looked to see if he was stirring and I see him sitting up in the crib. I was shocked! Shortly after that he started to “crawl”. I use the term loosely because it was really a hybrid of scooting on his back/side, army crawling, and rocking on his hands and knees. Well, I should have known that he would outgrow that quickly. He seems to be the type of child to master things quickly. Within a week or so he was full-blown, hands-and-knees crawling. Now he’s so fast you can’t leave him for a second! However, he didn’t stop there! He’s always liked to “walk” with our help. For Christmas, his friend Matthew had given him a walker toy, and since then he’s enjoyed being supported while he holds the handle and we move him forward. A couple weeks ago he started walking with the toy without any support. Now he’s so speedy and his favorite thing to do is toddle back and forth from the door to the edge of the living room (or the front door if you’re fast enough to turn him around). Within the past week, he’s started “cruising”. He’ll stand, supported by the table or the edge of the couch, and he’ll walk around. It’s amazing how fast this has all come! A month ago I had a baby – you could set him down with some toys and walk to get something or go to the bathroom. Now if I do that he’s either pulling up to stand on the door or some furniture, getting into something dangerous or delicate, or crawling halfway across the house!
The past month or two have brought so many changes and even looking at him I’m started to see more of a toddler and less of a baby. His first tooth (bottom right) popped out on the last day of January, and now his other bottom tooth has popped and it looks like the top two are about to follow. His hair has gotten thicker and more like a big boy (although it’s still curly and crazy as ever!). We had his 9 month appointment on the 7th and he weighs 18 pound even (10th percentile) and is 28 inches long (25-50th percentile). He’s healthy, smart, adorable, and amazing! We are so lucky he’s ours!
Now, finally, if you’ve read all that, he’s some cuteness as a reward:
What a sweet, happy little guy! We loved having you guys over the other night! Can't wait til we become a little group of 6!
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