C's seventh month

Our baby turned seven months old in July (over two weeks ago). 

The biggest change for her in her seventh month was food. A few days after turning six months old she had "solid" food for the first time. I fed it to her and Daddy took pictures. It's fun to watch how foreign it is for a baby to eat from a spoon. Her outfit was pink, by the way -- the only girly looking thing here besides her face.

She has loved everything she has tasted. I love Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book, Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right, and all of his books. Nutritarian eating has felt right and true to me since I started reading Eat to Live in October 2010. I am considering starting a separate blog about the cost of healthy meals. I brought this up because the first food C had was banana with my milk in it, following the DPYC book. He suggests to have your baby's first food be either banana or organic brown rice cereal for babies, and then to mix in some avocado a few days later, and to alternate vegetable and fruit feedings. After the avocado I introduced her to brown rice cereal, green beans, apples, and carrots. I smashed the raw banana and avocado with a fork, but for the other fruits and veggies I just steamed and pureed fresh or frozen ones (and she has had no-sugar-added bottled applesauce). Our other kids ate mostly homemade baby food also. It's so much cheaper than commercial baby food and, in my opinion, better.

During her seventh month she attended her first family reunion and experienced her first 4th of July (hearing fireworks only from a distance). I mentioned those things {here}.

She became an even better sitter, and she likes to sit and play with our musical LeapFrog toy that grandparents gave to Shboogoo for her first birthday. I realized I didn't even know the name of the toy, so I did an online search today. It's the LeapFrog Learn-Around Playground Activity Center. It turns out that it was recalled because "a child's arm can become caught in the activity center's plastic tube" -- and I never knew! I don't think I've seen our kids put their arm in the tube, but I will supervise better when they use it. 

She loves music. Besides touching and listening to that toy, she enjoys it when I sing, and often when I play the piano I sit her on my lap and she plays, too. She's dancing more -- bouncing as she sits -- when there is a good rhythm, I think even when I just chant something. She likes to move her arm up and down and pat stuff with her palm. She also loves hearing rhymes such as Pat-a-Cake.

On July 19th the kids and I all went to see a family doctor because the oldest and the youngest each had a runny nose and the oldest also was coughing a little. More importantly, I made the appointment because my throat was hurting pretty badly the day before and I hoped I didn't have strep throat. None of us had strep throat -- yay! The symptoms only lasted for about two days. Anyway, we're glad C didn't get another infection like the one in February. At this appointment, when she was almost seven months old, she weighed barely under 15 pounds. She is so big in her car seat now compared to when I took this photo! Now her heels come past the word Graco.

Shboogoo and I like to say (I said it first), "How were we ever happy without her?"