Brooke, along with her friends Connelly & Lilly, enjoy some time babbling and toy-swiping while their Mommies exercise in the park ;)
I admit, I was rather dreading this moment. Brooke is officially on three meals a day - we added lunch. In addition, she is down to 3 bottles/sippy cups per day (from 4). Why did I dread this? Because now I have to prepare and feed an 8/9 month baby meals three times a day. Its challenging to figure out what to feed her and the process of making her meal is often as long as feeding her (and often almost as messy). I'm trying to incorporate more finger foods because she desperately wants to feed herself, but thats also a bit challenging too. She cannot pick up all objects, and some that she can pick up she cannot eat without choking ;)
It's been a long while since I talked about Brooke's relationship with books. If you remember old posts, Brooke would cry each time I read to her. Despite this fact, I continued to read to her on a daily basis. She continued to get more interested in books ... in addition to eating them she would close them while we were tryng to read them. It wasnt until we found this book that things started to change.
Learning to crawl involves a gradual trial-and-error learning process. When infants first get up on their hands and knees, they will make modest attempts at movement, rocking or swaying in the direction they want to go. When they try to move, their balance is unstable and they have trouble coordinating their movements, frequently moving an arm or leg and toppling over. One source of difficulty is the fact that, neurologically, control over the arms and shoulders develops faster than control of the legs. This is also the reason that once the infant is finally able to make real progress, it is often in a backwards direction, because she is able to push harder with her hands and arms than with her feet.Right now Brooke is working on her coordination and I expect she will actually be crawling fowrards in the next couple of weeks.
She is very proud of this new development. She uses it to bite her toys and any other object that is lucky enough to find is way into her mouth. She already is working on #2 and cannot wait to test her new little chompers out on those other babies that steal her toys at playgroups.
Its so fun to drink from that the process is often lengthy and messy. There is a lot of shaking, bouncing, wiggling and laughing ... but eventually what does not spill all over her face and chest ends up in her belly. 
Recently she has been practicing her push-ups. Not the baby kind of push up, but a big girl kind of push up. She looks like this baby, but her bottom is much lower. Its more true to form. She actually was watching my exercise class do both push ups and planks this morning and she kept doing her push up position. I think all of my exercising is starting to rub off on her (hopefully she doesnt notice that after I exercise I generally have a latte and pastry).
The past few days there have been a few moments where we thought she might have been waving. Its a flimsy arm movement that has been timed close to when we were encouraging her to wave, so we figured that she was sort of waving ... but werent sure. Today I was sure. She waved. She doesnt do it all of the time and its a new skill she still has yet to perfect ... but we are excited nonetheless. Right now its just an imitation thing, but before long she'll be using it as a greeting :)
I tried looking all over online about preparing lentils for a baby. Basically all I could find said the same thing: "prepare according to package directions" and then puree/moosh/smash to consistency for your baby. So I simmered the lentils for 20 minutes on the stovetop. I noticed during the cooking that some of the shells were floating in the water, and by the end of the 20 minutes I had a pile of cooked beans whose skins had slipped off. It was all one big messy heap. What was I to do? Did I need to weed through this pile and get all of the skins? Could Brooke eat them? SHOULD she eat them?
After three days of papaya, it never got any better than day one. She definitely isnt a fan, and I really dont blame her ;)
This morning we had papaya, which did not to over really well. She
often is a bit iffy about something new on the first day, but then
warms up to it in the days to follow ... But I'm not too sure papaya
is going to follow that trend.
Wholesomebabyfood.com is a great site for those who are making their own baby food, but also just for information in general. It gives you nutrition information, proper times to introduce items, recipes, etc.
Lentils and other Dried Beans are another great source of protein and are generally low on the list of those foods that prompt allergic reactions. Im sure Brooke will like cauliflower, since she basically likes everything ... so in a few short days we will be entering the world of the lentil :) Seems like lentils mix well with a variety of foods (Apples,Peaches,Green Beans,Sweet Potato and Tofu just as an example) so it will be a great item to add into the mix. We need to add a third meal soon and I'm getting worried about having to plan out all of her meals, I need as many options as possible!
