Love, Life and Appreciation

Just a few photos from the past few weeks :-)

It's been a few weeks since May has started solid foods and it's been exciting seeing what she likes and dislikes. We introduced her to regular rice cereal at first. We mixed it with breast milk. She hated that. I read afterward comment online where someone wrote, "Have you ever tried rice cereal? It's horrible, no wonder babies hate it." I knew then that we would have to mix it more with just breast milk. I gave her the rice cereal first because the pediatrician recommended that we give the cereal so she could get more iron. I did some searching online and found the rice cereal with banana and apple already mixed in. We got that and she loved it. We waited a few days before introducing new foods. So far she has not had an allergic reaction to any of the foods we've introduced to her.

May has tried carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, bananas, oatmeal with peaches, and peaches, in that order.  Now one thing I wish I would have researched more about the BRAT diet. That's bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. The diet is to help with diarrhea. Well May did not have diarrhea and in fact had the reverse. We stopped giving her the rice cereal has a result and switched to oatmeal with peaches. We also gave her prune juice. We're keeping a close eye on what we introduce to her now and we'll be sticking with the p's like peaches, pears, and peas. In regard to the foods she liked, she loved the rice cereal with banana and apple, carrots, bananas, peaches, and oatmeal with peaches. She did not like squash or sweet potatoes. She closed her mouth to those. We're thinking we'll try to re-introduce the sweet potatoes when she gets older.

Some signs that we saw her to to kind of signal to us she was ready for solid foods was that she can support herself while sitting and transfer objects from one hand to the other. She was also showing great interest in the foods that we were eating, by reaching out towards them and opening and closing her mouth in a chewing motion. Her tongue-thrust reflex was diminishing as well.

May seems to excited to try new foods too. She gets so happy when we place her in her booster seat. She's reached for the spoon a couple of times and wanted to put her hand in the bowl. Kind of like,"Ooh what's this?" or "You're going to slow, Mom. Let me do it." She also like exploring her booster seat and looking at her surroundings.

We can't believe it. May is six months old. That's half a year! These pass six months have gone by pretty fast. From giving birth to her, to watching her lift her head up, to seeing her sit up and she's ready for solid foods. It's amazing. I'm still breastfeeding her too.

She knows where her most of her food is coming from, hehe.  She's also got a case of niplash. Rex will start dancing while I nurse her sometimes and she'll look up and smile. We've been thinking May has been teething for weeks now. She was drooling a lot a few weeks ago and literally drenching her toys. We've been giving her teething rings, some of which have been chilled in the refrigerator.  She chews on the rings and Rex says he can see two of her bottom teeth coming in. I only felt a bite once, May seems to be nursing alright. She also still lives sucking on her Soothie. We've also got some teething gel. Soon she'll be cutting some teeth.

Sleeping wise, May still gets up two to three times a night. We are starting to get more into a routine before bedtime, like a warm bath and feeding. In these next few months, we sure she'll move towards more sleeping through the night. We also got her a LeapFrog My Pal Violet toy. I like how the toy can grow as she grows. So far she just stares at the toy and it's almost as big as she is. She does seem to like the colors shining from Violet's collar though. We are encouraging May to crawl as well. Right now not really crawling. She can move from side to side however. She is reaching for everything and continuing to talk and sing :-)

Happy Six Months Miss May!