A Special Christmas Treat

We decided to delay solids for many reasons including the fact that our pediatrician recommends waiting until 8 or 9 months . When he turned 6 months old (the general recommended time to begin supplementing baby food) I could not imagine feeding him yet! He was such a little baby. Now that he's 8 months I am more than ready to not be solely responsible for sustaining him.

A lot of people have made comments about him still only drinking breastmilk. Heck, he doesn't even get water! Although its been a challenge at times, I think its worked out wonderfully. At 8 months the sickest Marshall has been is a stuffy nose for a few days. Still not a diaper rash, ear or eye infection, stomach bug.... nothing. Now, who knows if that has anything do do with breastfeeding or not, but it obviously didn't hurt.

We debated making our own baby food and then decided that skipping straight to table foods and using the baby led weaning method made the most sense for us. We eat multiple vegetables each night so it would be much easier to just give him what we're eating than messing with spoon feeding. Also because we waited, he can easily pick up food and feed himself.

We decided Christmas would be a memorable time for his first "real meal" and we'd go with avocado since it is easy to digest and full of healthy fats.

I got my camera, Jerad got the video camera and... it was anticlimactic to say the least.

Oh, hello!


lalala I'm a happy little guy


hmmm, what's this squishy thing?


Maybe I should taste it?


OMG.


WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?


No more Mr. Nice Baby.


I'm just going to ignore you and play with this squishyness.


The End

So, that was that. The avocado was not a hit. It was kind of a let down after waiting so long. I tried again today and got the same reaction. In a few days we'll try banana or sweet potato, maybe he'll be a bigger fan?

Christmas

We had such a wonderful Christmas. Marshall decided to sleep in till 7am (unheard of!) then Jerad's family came over and we made waffles, omelets, and mimosas.

Jerad and I decided that we weren't going to get Marshall anything this year since he has no clue what Christmas is and doesn't even open presents for himself yet. I buy him things all the time plus we knew his grandparents would spoil him, so we just got him a handmade wooden giraffe ornament and wrote "Marshall 2010." The presents we got eachother were all in the spirit of documenting baby moments, so I guess technically they were a little for him too.

I bought him a pocket video camera

and he totally surprised me by getting me a really nice camera
I was so excited. SO EXCITED.

Anyways, here are a few pictures of little Marshall being cute on Christmas:

I can't believe that he will be WALKING next Christmas! Aye yai yai.

Christmas Eve

Our first Christmas as a family of three! We spent Christmas Eve at my mom and dad's house with my sister's in laws and Jerad's brother.

Marshall loved being passed around

He was quite the little ham.


He got lots of special "grandma's house toys" which he loved.




My mom gave everyone calendars and told us we had to go through and write down birthdays and important dates.

Then she let us in on a little surprise

We're going on a one week cruise to Mexico!

Marshall isn't quite sure how he feels about that. Or maybe he stayed up until 11:00 which is unheard of and just didn't know how to deal with it.

3rd Annual Gingerbread Extravaganga!

1st here, second here.

I love this every year.













We didn't go as all-out as last year, but I still think its pretty cute:

He's moving!

So, Marshall has been scooting and rolling to reach things for awhile now. This weekend he started really going! Its pretty cute. If he is on one side of the room and we are on the other, now he'll chase us down.

He doesn't have the crawling motion quite down yet... its more of an inchworm type movement. I guess it works though! I wanted him to wait until after Christmas so that I didn't have to worry about the tree, and he almost made it. He is also OBSESSED with wrapping paper. I've been giving him the scraps from present wrapping and he thinks he's in heaven.

He has been doing some other cute things that I always forget to mention as well. Around 5 months he started thinking it was hilarious when we'd pat his mouth while he was saying "ahhhhh." Around 6 months he started doing it all by himself. Occasionally he will do the sign for milk while nursing. When he wants to nurse instead of signing, he taps his mouth a few times on the shoulder of whoever is holding him while saying "ba ba ba." Its pretty cute.

He now "claps" when he does something funny, or when he wants us to start clapping. I use quotation marks because he doesn't clap his palms together, he claps one palm onto the back of the other hand. He also starts doing it whenever we say "yeeeeaaaaayyyy." When we kiss his face, he kisses us back with huge sloppy kisses. He will also randomly grab us really hard and kind of bite while laughing hysterically. I think its his version of when we snort and blow raspberries on his neck or stomach. When he does that it usually means he wants to be tickled which is one of his favorite things intheworld.

He loves our cat Mao and will hold really still until Mao gets within reach and then lash out and grab him as hard as he can.

Marshall is a much bigger fan of this game than Mao is.

He is really close to waving good-bye. He doesn't wave yet, but when we say "bye-bye" and wave at him he sticks his hand out. Sometimes when we are playing he will just start making the goofiest faces; scrunching up his nose and breathing funny, sticking his bottom lip over his top lip, pursing his lips together. I think he is going to be quite the little ham.

All in all, he's just cute.

I've never tried uploading a video before, so lets see if this works: