Baby news

P recently turned nine months old; it's been an impressive month.

When SY brought him to Georgia for my commissioning, I hadn't seen him for six months. In that time, he had two bottom teeth come in and had managed to learn how to crawl using his elbows.

In the past month, though, he's learned to not only do a proper crawl, but he's learned to stand using chairs and other low-lying objects. He's also had two top teeth come in.

He's moving slowly to more solid foods. SY is really good at making interesting foods for him with a food processor. She'll make a "menu of the day" such as chicken with rice and broccoli and feed it to him for several meals.

Though he doesn't often eat it without somewhat of a fuss, through experimentation she's found several winning tactics. First is to mix in sweet potatoes -- he likes them, and they're healthy. Another is to alternate fun fruits with unfun nourishment. One spoon of banana, one spoon of "repas du jour", and repeat.

P has some other interesting nuances. He likes to be held so that he faces out. He's really comfortable sleeping on SY's back while she walks around. When we try to put him down, he'll often wake up. (That's a little frustrating.)

While he and SY were staying with her parents, he often woke up during the night, and SY felt compelled to wake up and care for him. It was really draining. Being at my parents' house, we put him in another room and -- once we put him asleep -- agreed not to get up for him until morning.

It worked amazingly well. Sure, he'd cry, but about five minutes later he'd be sound asleep. It was amazing. "Why didn't we think about this before?" we asked ourselves.