The Bird and The Bean: October 2014

Eden's sixth month has gone by faster than any of the other months, I swear! Recently, when someone asked how old she was and my husband responded with 6 1/2 months, I had to stop and think about it and it blew my mind that she was almost 7 months already...and now the 23rd has rolled around again and she's been with us for a whole SEVEN months! It's NUTS! [Yes, it took me 9 days to finish & publish this].

This girl is so full of personality and I am absolutely enamored with her. She loves people and hasn't met a stranger yet. She's a drama queen at times which I know is going to stretch me as a parent but, for now, it's kind of adorable. The major change in the past month has been the introduction to solid foods. If anyone is wondering why we waited until Eden was 6 months old to introduce solids, here is a really good article to explain the rationale behind it: Is baby ready for solid foods? (What do the experts say?). We've decided to take a little bit of a different approach to introducing solids called Baby Led Weaning (BLW). Essentially, you feed baby the same things you eat (just with no added salt or sugar). It's not necessary to mash it up or anything. I realize it's kind of crazy to many people but it's perfect for us, mostly because we're too lazy to puree stuff and feed it to Eden on a spoon. She hasn't really consumed much because she hasn't quite gotten down the concept of taking bites and swallowing. You will see that the majority of the pictures I share below are of Eden trying new foods. The reason for this is two-fold. First, it's the easiest way to remember what foods we've offered her. Second, she's much more mobile these days and snapping a picture while she's in the high chair is much easier than trying to get one of her on the go. Speaking of mobility, she is rolling everywhere now and sitting up for much longer periods unassisted. I am in no hurry for her to start crawling but I'm afraid it's not too awfully far off.

She seems to be excelling in language over motor skills. She is making all kinds of consonant sounds these days--dadadada, mamamama, bababababa, wawawawa, nananana, etc. She is also blowing bubbles, sticking her tongue out a lot, and imitating all kinds of sounds, coughing being the cutest. I hope to capture some of this adorableness on video sometime soon.

Seeing as how this is taking me forever to complete and publish, I am going to go ahead and post some pictures and leave it at that! Enjoy!