At our weekly visit to my parents place on Friday she was uncharacteristically cranky. When she wasn't crying, she was either eating or sleeping. My dad also made the observation that she wasn't automatically putting everything in her mouth. He made the prediction that she would cut a tooth by Sunday. Well, he was wrong, but only by 2 days. I was just feeding her some banana and felt something in her mouth that wasn't there yesterday. Sure enough one of her bottom teeth has made an appearance!

I want to talk about food today.
I've been dutifully feeding her mashed up steamed vegetables, stewed and raw fruits and the usual suspects of cereals (boy does she not like those!). She also gets the occasional arrowroot cookie and she had yogurt for the first time today.
My question is, when do I get to feed her real food? You know, the stuff that I eat - ground up of course.
Is there an order I should introduce meats?
Can I cook stuff for her in oil?
Joe and I have no real food allergies, do we still have to keep to that 3 or more days between introducing new foods rule?
I'm having trouble picturing how to go from steamed sweet potato to, say, lasagne.
Any insight will be appreciated.

Further on the food topic, I bought one of the best things last week. I know Craftygrrrl uses one and Rocketbride also mentioned it, so after a small choking scare, I went out and got one of these:


All the parents I know with kids older than five are amazed.
I can now give her an apple slice or cookie and not have to keep an eye on how much of it is missing or constanly sweep her mouth for the large chunks she's broken off.

I also got some foam tiles for her to play on now that she likes to be on the floor more. I had been searching for some for weeks now, but either they were hideously expensive at the kids stores or my local hardware stores didn't carry them.
I was getting resigned to not getting any when I went and checked out my local Dollarama. These are smaller (approx 1 foot square) than the ones I was seeing in the boutique stores, and part of me is afraid that they're a lot more toxic as well. But hey, they were $1 each! I got 12 of them. They don't cover that much ground, but then, neither does she right now.
If we didn't have 3 pukey cats I probably wouldn't bother, but between that and the fact that she's bouncing her head off the floor regularly these days, I figure it's a good investment.

We've got weeks 30, 31 and 32 shots. You can see the tiles in these shots.

7 months today!
I've been having really mushy feelings all day today about being a mother. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I have been. Part of the reason why I waited so long to have a baby is that I just didn't want to be a mother. I love babies and the kids they grow up to be and I have a lot of fun with my mass of nephews and nieces, but I was always glad to see the back of them when the parents came to take them away.
I guess it's true that it's different with your own child. Despite the hard work, I am really having fun with her. It's great to see her playing and figuring out stuff (Right now she's flipping plastic tabs on her excersaucer, something she couldn't do 2 months ago.) And she loves our daily walks. She is so interested in everything around her I love taking her to new places just to see her so wide-eyed. I'm really lucky that she's such a great kid and that I can take the whole year off to be with her and see her grow like this.

hm, what else was there?
Oh yes, She went swimming for the first time last night!



I couldn't see her face for most of it, but Joe says she had what I call her experimenting look on her face the entire time. I think that means she liked it. She didn't complain once. Not even when I dunked her face in the water by mistake a couple of times, or when she started to turn a bit blue from the cold. I had to take her out after 20 minutes because her lips were starting to turn blue and she was starting to shiver. Hopefully she can stay the entire 30 minutes next week!

Also on the plus side, she's back to only waking up once during the night! That means I can get 2 good chunks of at least 4 hours of sleep a night. I am enjoying it while I can because apparently the 9 month sleep regression is a doozy. I'm loving Ask Moxie, but sometime she scares me. I know it's better to be prepared for insane baby behaviour, but part of me would love to just live in ignorance for a while.

Oh, and I almost forgot! Joe and I took the infant and child CPR course on the weekend. I'll probably be going to my brother-in-law's cottage in Georgian Bay (and I mean in Georgian Bay - an island that's a 20 minute boat ride away from Parry Sound) this summer, and since it is so isolated I wanted to be prepared for anything.
At first we thought we were going to be the only ones taking it, but at the last minute a few more people showed up including the parents of a 2 year old and the grandparents. We got to talking to them and it seems that they are taking it because their son is prone to siezures when he gets a fever.
The whole thing was a bit sobering but in all, very reassuring. I feel a lot more confident about taking her places off the beaten track now.

here's week 29:


and an extra in her goth dress from Grandma and Grandpa!