This past week has been quite a doozy for Baby Girl. She was taken on her first zoo trip, as detailed earlier, she started on solid foods, she managed to pull herself up to her feet, she literally crawled over Daddy, who was trying to keep her from going from one part of the room to another, and more importantly, our precious little snowflake has turned six months old.
The six month mark is pretty impressive for us, because, let’s face it, for a guy who has had the kind of commitment issues I have, and the track record I have with keeping plants alive, anyone who took the “under” on the over/under couldn’t be blamed for doing so.
The solid foods milestone has been entertaining so far. As I understand is normal for most babies, Baby Girl ends up wearing more of her food than she eats. At first it was a challenge to get the spoon into her mouth, we would end up with about half the food in her mouth, and the other half on her bib, with a smattering of food on her Bumbo and a bit on the floor. Once we figured out how to get the spoon in her mouth (I go in sideways, tipping towards her mouth once contact is made with the bottom lip, and leave it in her mouth as she slurps away and I can see her swallow), I was convinced we had nailed it. Then she spit out about half the spoonful, somehow managing to get it in her nose.
The other effect of Baby Girl being on solid foods is what it is going to do to her digestive system. We’ve already experienced the first post-solids poop, and while I wasn’t home for it, I have been told that it was more…solid, and that it took Baby Girl a bit more effort to get it out. Mind you, she already looked like she was pushing a small car up a steep hill when she pooped. Apparently now it looks like she’s pushing an SUV up Everest.
I’ve also heard that it gets stinkier when they start eating solids, so the joys of parenthood seem as though they will keep multiplying.
We started solids over the weekend, so as to have both of us here, just in case things were more difficult than we had planned on them being. Starting in the morning, I’ll have her and all to myself for three feedings a day. I can only imagine there will be rice cereal covering a fairly large swath of the apartment, along with most every piece of clothing I own.
The other milestone she reached, managing to stand up on her own, is the more troubling of the bunch. I mean, I suppose it’s good in a holistic sense, we do of course want Baby Girl to continue to develop at a normal rate, however, it does mean that I will have to keep an even closer eye on her than I do now. As things stood, I could assemble her play yard each morning – consisting of random storage crates arranged to block off a modest section of the living room within which she could roam uninterrupted – and get things accomplished without worrying about her ingesting one of the millions of things that might kill her.
Now, since she can get up but has not figured out how to sit back down, I’ll be keeping an eye out for a standing baby who may be seconds away from falling backwards and bonking her cute little noggin on the carpet. We’ve been assured by the pediatrician that babies bonking their heads is quite normal and that we shouldn’t freak out every time it happens, but a parent’s instinct is to not let this sort of thing happen, and I imagine I will spend quite a bit of time zipping across the room trying to catch her as she explores the limits of gravity as it pertains to her lack of balance.
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