Week 27: July 15 - 21

Nursing
No changes here.

Sleeping
We are seeing improvement in her naps. Yay! She is definitely a happier baby all around, and I am also getting in tune with her tired cues. This helps me to not wait too long to put her down. Right now, she's only able to be awake 1-1.5 hours at a time, which is down from the 2-2.25 hours of about a month ago. But she's going through some big developmental changes right now, plus maybe a growth spurt, so I'm not concerned. She's gone through periods of less awake time before.

Solids/Food
Thursday:
Breakfast - cantaloupe. Kinda put it in her mouth. Wasn't feeling it.
Lunch - leftovers from her first dinner. She gnawed some more carrot and I think swallowed a piece of pasta!
Dinner - didn't happen. The chicken was bad, Matt wasn't home, so she didn't eat with us tonight. :(

Friday:
Lunch - leftovers from first dinner (still!). Gnawed more carrot, more pasta, didn't do much.

Saturday:
Breakfast - oatmeal! She had FUN playing with it, and even got some down.
Dinner - we had white lasagna, and she went nuts on it. It was awesome.

Tuesday:
Breakfast - cucumber slices. Eh, it was more of a brunch. :) She gnawed really well on the cucumber, seemed to like it. There was quite a depression where the cucumber was in her mouth!
Lunch - FINALLY, the much-anticipated (by me) trip to Chick-fil-A! I cut a finger off my chargrilled sandwich and gave it to her. HER FIRST MEAT. She got some pieces off in her mouth but they both came out again. She was more interested in trying to gnaw on the TABLE than her chicken. (EW!)
Snack - watermelon! She seemed to love it and gnawed it a bunch. It got all over her, so good thing it was a bath day!

Wednesday:
Lunch - scrambled egg. This was kinda like the oatmeal, more mess than meal, but she did really well. Didn't have to worry so much about gagging or choking. Can you choke on scrambled egg?? :)

By the book...
According to "Your Baby's First Year, Week by Week," during this week, Madeleine:
1. Balances head well (um, yes!)
2. May begin teething (nothing so far!)
3. Likes to explore body with mouth and hands (I've seen this over the last week or so)
4. May like to such on toes (she did this a few weeks ago for the first time and definitely loves chewing her socks!)
5. Plays vigorously with noisemaking toys (yup! She started this a week or so ago, too)
6. May chew fingers and suck thumb (she's been chewing her fingers for weeks as well)

New Things
She has started propelling herself forward. She can get up on her knees or feet and then she kinda army crawls forward. On Thursday, she got up on all fours--hands and knees--for a brief moment. She wants to take off, I can feel it! Hopefully it will be soon, for her sake.

Special Topic: Baby-Led Weaning
Baby-led weaning is a term that was coined by a British health visitor and has a Master's Degree in studying developmental readiness for solids. Essentially, in baby-led weaning, the baby starts out with real food from day 1. There are no baby food, no purees, and the parents don't spoon-feed. The basic premise suggests that spoon-feeding with purees is unnecessary for infants of at least 6 months of age, that purees and spoon-feeding developed when parents started their infants on solids at 2 or 3 months of age. By the time a baby is 6 months old, she doesn't need purees and traditional baby food.

Our dear friends in Australia told me about this method, and it sounded fantastic. So I bought and read the book, and we got everything ready for letting Madeleine eat with us. It's supposed to be a slow process, letting her explore food at her own pace. Supposedly, around 9 months, she'll start to realize that food will fill her tummy, and she'll actually eat more. Until then, I'll just keep nursing her the same as I have been. I am in no hurry to wean her!

I LOVE the faces she makes when she gets something in her mouth. It's total surprise, and not always a good one! At least, so it would seem from her expression.

Misc
Madeleine absolutely LOVES Layla. Whenever the dog walks by, Madeleine grins at her and reaches for her. When Layla looks at her, baby's grin is huge!

She has been responding to her name for a few weeks. It's very cool!

Madeleine's eyes have been changing color for awhile. This week, I snapped some pics, and one or two turned out. [Click to view larger image]



Slideshow

Video of the week!