TOAST!

Darn, we should've taken a picture. We gave the baby toast this morning, with apparently no ill effects. Thus, wheat might be considered safe. Wheat, one of the cornerstones of today's American diet. A BIG STEP towards eating what everyone else eats. Pasta, bread, cake, etc. Now the only remaining "allergic foods" are egg whites, citrus, and nuts. Baby is ON HIS WAY.

And cute! He looked at it for a while, not sure it was food. Curtis took a bite to show him. Then he nibbled a bit, and a bit more, and ate probably 3 sq. inches of it. And then discovered he could disintegrate it with his fingers, and crumbled a bit onto his lap. And ate a little more. I'm so pleased.

Baby progress

Two teeth recently sprouted on top. They appear crooked now; I bet they straighten out over time.

This morning, rather than daredevilishly climbing all over the kitchen, he played happily with a small acorn squash, and the whisk attachment to my stand mixer. He was mad when we started to eat cereal without him, so I got him some applesauce and oatmeal cereal and sat him down with us. He made funny little cute baby faces almost the whole meal.

Sleeping has become more regular, down around 8, up at 5. I suspect he should sleep a little longer, but he doesn't seem to wind down until 7-7:30. I still want to nurse him at night, but at the same time think he needs to go to bed without that "sleep crutch" sometimes, too. What to do!

He is paying more attention to toys now, somehow. The new favorites are a little siamese cat and a chocolate lab toy that his cousins provided over the weekend. He likes it when we make dog and cat noises to go along with the toy, though both C and I need to work on our "purring" noises, as they are sub-par. He seems like he's trying to say Meow Meow in response to our little meows.

Lunch today - beans and rice, avocado, sweet potato, some yellow zucchini (that he won't eat, in place of the cucumbers that he doesn't eat), cottage cheese, cheerios, strawberries, and a peach. MMMM.

I won't be heading home after work until after he's in bed, since my work team is having a celebratory dinner tonight. I will miss baby. I hope he does OK with dad; he always does, so there's no call to worry!

Locomotion

He stands up! Not independently yet, and no steps are on the horizon. But he stands in his crib, and he stands in the living room while leaning on the fireplace and chewing on dad's shoe strings. He crawls very quickly now, either in military or all-fours crawling (still not his favorite). I think he'll walk before he crawls all-fours 100% of the time.

He looked at me and called me MaMa the other day. He looked at C and called him DaDa yesterday. He started making new noises, too...oggoggogggogg.

Baby food

Here's what the baby got for lunch today:
2 bottles of milk (4-5 oz, human)
cottage cheese
banana
strawberry
pear
plums
cucumber
sweet potato
beans and rice
cheerios

I am trying to think of new things to give him, and coming up blank. He also eats green beans, oatmeal, berries, yogurt, applesauce, and lots of other things. I guess the mental blank is for entrees, more or less. I think fruit is good for him, sure, but he also needs something a little more substantial. Or perhaps that's what the milk is for. Oh, and he eats the cottage every day now, no problem from daycare.

Sleep vs. Eat?

The past few days have been sort of tough for me. Baby is waking at least once a night, and there are a variety of possible reasons for this. Teething. Hungry. Developmental stuff - he's learning to crawl properly, getting beyond the "Military Crawl" he's been doing for ages. He wakes, we try to ignore so he goes back to sleep, then I get up and feed him for a half hour and he goes back to sleep. Sometimes I'm so asleep I forget about the "try to let him go back to sleep on his own" and just go get him. I don't know if I'm enabling poor sleep behavior, and using nursing as a "sleep crutch" or if I'm just doing what we need to do to get the baby and me all the sleep we possibly can, given all of the above.

Last night was to bed at 7ish, up at 1ish, back up at 5. That's not terrible. The night before, though, he was up at 11 and back to bed at 1, then sleep until 5:45. That doesn't SOUND worse, but it meant I got about 6 hours total. If I get less than 7, I start to lose functionality. I injured myself twice before getting to work yesterday - once on the fridge at home, once on the car in the parking lot. I knew that mentally I was unlikely to function well in critical thinking tasks, so I focused on easier, administrative-style things to do. My desk is the clearer for it. I think I am improved now, having gotten more than 7 hours last night.

I think baby does not get enough to eat during the day, but perhaps that's a mistake to think that. He gets bottles, plus a bit of solid food. He always finishes the cheerios we send, and the fruit. The vegetables, less so. The cottage cheese? never. I think that's because the first time she gave him the cheese, he didn't like it, and now she doesn't believe that he will eat it, and doesn't offer. He loves it at home, though. I also wonder if he doesn't get a ton of food during the day because she is busy busy busy with all the kids. Again, not sure if that's fair to say, since he does get bottles, and eats fruit and stuff, and probably does fine.

30 inches long, 20 pounds. Big boy!