Robbie turned 9 months on Nov. 15. He started crawling a few days before then. He'd been practicing crawling for many weeks and I saw him crawl a few feet soldier style (belly on the floor) a few times, and even take a few crawl steps with his belly off the floor, but he didn't like to do it often. Only to reach a very tempting toy (like a doggie toy). I could see that he could crawl if he really tried, but he hardly ever did it. Then suddenly one day he started crawling properly with his belly off the floor and he's been doing it ever since. It's almost as if he waited until he could do it perfectly.
He spends most of his waking hours crawling around and likes going to any windows or any furniture where he can pull himself up to a standing position. His favorite crawling targets are the window blinds on the patio door, the doggie door, the stairs (we've now installed a baby gate there), and the dog's food and water dishes in the kitchen. Yes, he has tasted the dog food, but judging from his face he didn't care for it much.
When he's not crawling, he's standing. He still needs a piece of furniture to hold on to most of the time. If he's got his hands full with a toy, he might let go for a few seconds and stand unsupported, but then he realizes what he's doing and plops down on the floor or grabs hold of the furniture again. He can take a few steps back and forth along the furniture, but isn't cruising around fully yet.
Robbie is also making some progress with eating solids. He'd been eating things like cheerios for a month or two, but lately I'm also getting him to try other finger foods. He's slowly getting used to eating things like pieces of banana or cooked carrots. At first he'd make a funny face when he'd have a piece of non-pureed food in his mouth. The same food like carrots that he likes pureed, he'd reject when given in pieces (cooked until it's very soft, much softer than the cheerios he was eating already). But lately he's accepting them better. That's a good thing because it's getting more difficult to feed him pureed food from a jar with a spoon. He keeps grabbing for the spoon so he can take it and bang it on the table.
His current favorite food is veggie puffs. That's a snack similar to cheerios, but sweeter and less nutritious. He also likes Kicks, a children's cereal (without milk) that has a lot of added vitamins and not much sugar. We mix the veggie puffs and kicks in with the cheerios and give him a few of each. First he picks out the veggie puffs and eats those, then he picks out the kicks, and then he slowly, reluctantly, eats the remaining cheerios (but throws half of them on the floor for Lainie and Cosmo). Need I mention that his favorite is the least healthy and his least favorite (cheerios) is the most healthy?
Posted by pjakobs at November 21, 2004 11:14 AM