Technically between 7-9 months we are supposed to feed Gus three small meals a day. With John this would not have been a problem. My problem would have been keeping him from eating too much so he would still nurse. Now Gus, he is a completely different story. After many attempts and numerous trials I finally found a couple of things he will willingly eat.
The first thing is popcorn, who would have thought? This is actually a pain because it is a lot of work to get the kernel parts off so he can eat it. But he loves it.
The second is oatmeal with apple butter.
Don't confuse apple butter with apple sauce, Gus can tell you they are completely different. My friend Jan gave me some homemade apple butter and I decided to try it out. To my surprise Gus actually opened his mouth for more.
Oh, and I guess there is a third. He loves all of those finger snacks. His favorite snack is the yogurt melt.
Now for the avocados...he HATED them. Hate is a pretty strong word, but these pictures are from the third attempt to eat them.
unsuspecting
"Not cool, Mom."
"I hate these." He is actually spitting them out.
Just to prove his point he started gagging.
He's already screaming at me. He continued to scream until I put the bowl of avocados in the sink. I'm pretty sure I was cursed out in baby language.
I may not try avocados again for awhile, but I'll keep plugging away at the rest. I'll satisfy the picky eater until he is one. After that, he learns to choke it down or do without. Hopefully it won't come to that.
I can't believe August is 7 months old today. Time is going by so fast. Gus doesn't have to go to the doctor's office until 9 months so I don't have official stats, but I am pretty sure he is 27 3/4 inches long and 20 pounds. The last time we went to the doctor my suspicions were confirmed that we were feeding him too much formula. I think I was trying to compensate for the fact that he wasn't eating any baby food and he was pretty fussy (he has two teeth now). So when in doubt, we fed. Not such a good idea. Food is still a struggle, but we are working through it.
Other than the eating issues, Gus is doing very well. He can get from sitting to a crawling position without hurting himself and Hans saw him briefly crawl last night, but he was too mad and hungry to repeat the process for me.
Mostly he just scoots around the room and tries to get John's trains, crayons and coloring book. John is actually handling this pretty well, meaning he doesn't hit Gus. He just sits there and screams at the top of his lungs like he is being attacked. I guess I should be thankful he hasn't given Gus a black eye...yet.
John saw this picture and said, "Look mom, I'm kicking Gus." At least he's honest.
Gus also loves his johnny jump up. As long as he can see you he is pretty content to bounce in this thing for a long while. Even when he is ready to get out he'll cry but still be bouncing.
Last but most certainly not least, my baby is sleeping through the night!!! I'm not sure how I ever made it through my high school or college years, or even through John being a newborn, but I need sleep. While Gus was only getting up once a night I was still barely functioning during the day and my poor husband was getting the brunt of my bad moods. I decided for the sake of my sanity, my marriage and my husband's hope of having more children that I needed to let Gus cry it out. Since we were feeding him the one time a night he would awaken, I thought I would ease Gus into this whole idea by going in and rocking him back to sleep the first couple of nights. This turned out to not be such a good idea. The first night I went in his room to rock him which just seemed to make him more and more angry. After we finally just left him alone he went to sleep. The second night he cried for only 5 minutes and now, with the exception of one freakish night, he sleeps through the night. I feel like a new person, I should have done this months ago!
Today has been a rather tough day for my big boy as he can't seem to keep himself out of trouble. Earlier this afternoon, John went upstairs to go to the bathroom and then I heard him rifling in his dresser drawers.
"What are you doing?" I asked
"Um, I need new underwear."
"Why?"
"I peed in my other underwear"
I went into the bathroom to get his soiled underwear and stepped in a huge puddle. The puddle started from the step-stool and trickled down the side until it reached the floor.
"What is this!?!"
John just looks at the floor, then looks at me and says, "Don't stress out mom. It isn't a big deal. It's only pee."
I just couldn't believe my ears, what a punk! After looking at him for a couple of minutes, and trying not to laugh, I told him if it was no big deal then he could clean it himself. I handed him a rag and a bucket with water and told him to get scrubbing. Too bad I was too baffled to get pictures.
