Nora stuff - as usual

[sal_amanda]

There are those who think you should absolutely, positively never ever ever feed a baby anything other than breastmilk or formula before six months because that is the AAP recommendation.  I heard the best professional advice on the matter, though.  That is, go by the baby, not the calendar.  And I think that's appropriate for not just the food issue, but many other things as well.  It also means that not only are some babies ready sooner, but others aren't ready until much later.  You gotta figure it out on a case by case basis, really.

That being said, Nora is one who is ready sooner.  She fits every last bit of criteria and she has taken to the cereal from the get go.  Now on the issue of the cereal, I have my doubts that it's the be all, end all of what you start a baby off with.  Someone in one of my birth communities posted a really interesting article about some experts proving that serving your baby blander than bland foods is totally not necessary.  I've often wondered about this because I just don't believe that other cultures start their kids off with rice mush.  And I doubt that in places such as India where spices are in heavy use that they don't use those spices on the foods they give their babies.  This article basically agreed and said that it's ridiculous to not give your child different tastes.  They can handle it.  Someone had also replied with a link to a site about baby led weaning, which I think is something I can totally get into in a couple months.  Again, I'm not sure of the need for this rice mush, but I think we're not going to live too dangerously until she really does get to be six months.  Meanwhile, she digs the mush and laughs while she's eating.

Actually, she just laughs and laughs and laughs a lot more, in general.  She makes these weird squealing noises that are too fricking funny.  We keep trying to get them on tape, but you bring out a camera and she is instantly the most serious baby in the world.  She actually seems to enjoy tummy time lately.  She is *this* close to rolling from back to front.  She gets onto her side and she's almost there.  We'll sometimes give her the tiniest nudge or pull to get her all the way around.  When she's on her tummy, she doesn't seem overly interested in rolling at all, but once or twice she's sort of gotten up onto her knees.  

Her sleeping is sometimes disrupted, which I gather is just a developmental thing at this age.  She'll wake up and coo or talk to herself over night, but then put herself back to sleep.  She wiggles around at night a lot, too, because we always find her in the morning in a totally different position.  For napping, I'm still doing the tummy napping and she does sometimes wake up, but patting her on the back generally gets her back to sleep fairly quickly.  

Getting her to fall asleep for naps has gotten to be entertaining.  I tried singing to her the one day while I walked her around the living room and it totally worked so now I do it all the time.  She has a thing for "Old McDonald Had a Farm," probably due to the repetitive nature of it.  We then have broken out various old camp songs, such as "Found a Peanut" or "The Ants Go Marching" and so on, as they are also repetitive.  Not wanting to get bored, I'll try to think of other songs that I know the words to, but that can be really hard on the spot like that.  I can't believe how many Beatles songs I don't really know the words to if I'm not singing along with it.  Once I figured that out, I moved on to Elvis, which worked almost instantly the other day.  I've also tried church hymns and songs from musicals I was in during high school.  

And finally, Nora is a photo star.  One of the members of the Buffalo dorks community was looking to build up her portfolio to start doing some professional photography and she volunteered to come do pictures for people for free as long as we bought at least one picture and agreed to let her use the pictures for promotional use.  I went for it and the pictures are fantastic.  This girl is awesome.  If anyone local needs a photographer for anything, I'd highly recommend her.  The pictures of Miss Eleanor in all her naked glory seem to be everyone's favorites.

Comments

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

My Sam just started flipping back to front on Friday, and since then he's become a tummy napper too-- the same kid who spent the past four months shouting in despair whenever he was put on his tummy is now voluntarily flipping over just to fall asleep in that position! And this morning he took his longest nap ever since he was newborn just to prove he liked napping that way I guess.

I seem to sing a lot of Beatles songs to Sam too, just because they seem to be the first songs to pop out of my mouth, and even though I've been a huge Beatlemaniac for the past 15 years I still mess up the words half the time without having the recording to sing along to. I've YET to get "Octopus's Garden" right (his nursery is an underwater theme, so I attempt that one a lot)-- somehow I miss half a verse consistently.

[sal_amanda]

Ooh, I hadn't thought of "Octupus's Garden." Nora's room is also oceanic and there are some octupi on her walls. I'll have to remember that for next time.

Nora has just started enjoying tummy time. I was worried it would never happen and that as a result, she'd never crawl. I guess maybe they just reach an age where it doesn't bother them anymore or something. It's a mystery.

[i-am-solid.livejournal.com]

Well, the tush of a Squishy is irresistable.

[sal_amanda]

Does that make it a squishy tush?