Friday night we started broccoli with Celia, it was Josie’s choice (from a finite list of options) which she got. Josie opted not to eat the broccoli herself. After a few days of ho-hum response to the sweet potato her eyes widened and she was eager to grab onto the bright green food with a handle in front of her. Here’s a photo of the end result, plus the video of the event! This morning, a week after starting with food, we got confirmation that she actually swallowed some sweet potato and broccoli last night at dinner.

Caught a family cobra pose during morning yoga! Don’t get many of Celia on her belly, she does not like it. Horrid lighting, but sometimes that’s all you can get in the moment.

Last night Celia got her first chance to eat some real food. Like Josie, we started her off with sweet potato. She was definitely eager to grab the new thing in front of her and shove it in her mouth. She wasn’t so thrilled about the taste and texture, the new bib held a lot of interest. Her entire eating session was barely longer than the video below, which is very long for our standard videos. She enjoyed playing with it and the feeling, but I think she was too tired to do much.

Tonight she was more well rested and got a second chance with the sweet potato and was very enthusiastic. It’s not clear how much she ate, but she did a better job of grabbing the food and putting it in and biting it. She definitely got pieces in her mouth, and many were slowly split out. We’ll find out when we get a diaper if anything was swallowed, I think she ate some. Very minimal gagging and not too many funny faces even. She made a big grab for Jordi’s bread when he served her more sweet potato, so she’s looking out for more. Josie thinks we should do broccoli next. [note all our videos are in HD now so you can improve the quality in the settings on the bottom from where it says 360p]

Today Celia is six months old and so she got her first eats! She was eager, but not exactly in awe of the food and the excitement was short lived. She didn’t nap a lot today and so she was pretty tired and had limited patience. More about that later though in another post.

This month Celia has continued to strengthen her ability to sit and walk while holding onto our hands. She can stand up for a few seconds before she tilts and she can walk at a decent speed while holding on. She can’t yet walk with only one hand supporting her though, despite her efforts to do so. She just spins around and falls. She can hold herself up to the music table too and cruise along a little bit without any help.

We’ve had some teething this month with her second tooth coming in, lots of drooling and complaining. She really wants to be going and about, days at home are not satisfying for her and thankfully the weather is giving us more opportunities to go out. She fits into our bigger baby hawk carrier now and will sleep on my back and front in that giving us more freedom to move about.

She has thankfully stopped the ear piercing shrieks in exchange for a general whiny attitude unless she is being walked about, fed, or chewing on something she’s not supposed to. It’s been hard to get anything done and her sleep has been terrible too. I just don’t even want to talk about it.

I’ve started doing baby-signing with her, but I’m not that consistent yet. Josie has been re-learning them as she doesn’t remember a thing. Celia has learned one game though with some positive reinforcement, peekaboo! She loves to pull a (clean) diaper over her own face and hide for a second and then hear us yell peek-a-boo when she pulls it down.

While we’re all still in love with her, right now is mostly a time of frustration, while she learns how to walk even though she can’t yet. Josie could take multiple steps on her own at 6.5 months, so maybe we’ll get there soon. She can roll pretty well, it’s too bad she hasn’t figured out that rolling can get her places.

• Size/weight: 9 and 12 month size, 16 lbs, I’ll save height for when I get Josie’s in two weeks.
• Favorite food: breastmilk
• Favorite toy: sophie the giraffe
• Favorite book: just eating any of them
• Favorite activity: walking, watching Josie
• Sleeping: waking all the time, 2 -3 naps, one long one usually, up at 7, in bed at 8.
• New skill: walking holding on, trying to stand
• Teeth: 2 bottom center
• Vocalizations: whining

Tonight I went to the grocery store and had a long pause in the vegetable aisle. Celia is six months old this Sunday, the age at which we’ve decided to start feeding our babies actual food instead of exclusively nursing, for many reasons. Sweet potatoes are up first. Celia is literally chomping at the bit now to get her hands on some food although an empty cup and a spoon have been very exciting at the dinner table for a few minutes at least.

She’s getting so big and it feels so fast. She can stand on her own two feet now (literally) for a few seconds, she’ll be walking in two months if she continues to match Josie’s rate of mobility. She’s got opinions now on where she’d like to go and what she’d like to do and while they’re nothing compared to Josie’s opinions (often simultaneous and conflicting) about life, she’s only going to have more. She’ll hopefully start using baby signs in a few months to communicate with us even more directly than she does now with her body language. It’s so exciting to watch her discover about her body and the world.

Josie’s in her own big bed in her own big room and I can only imagine Celia will want to move to that room younger than Josie moved out as she just adores Josie. It’s our job to raise them so that they don’t need us and there’s obviously no question whatsoever that they are still totally reliant on us now but the difference between 6 months and three years has gone so fast. Most of Josie’s friends are going to preschool in the fall, we’re keeping Josie home one more year before we send her. Then comes real school.

I didn’t want to buy the sweet potatoes.

Or maybe she’s just embarrassed about the hat. She really loved it actually.

This was about the 6th video Josie urged to shoot of the two of them together jumping. I wish I could bottle this because I sure could have used some today after Celia woke up practically every half hour last night. Each one ends with “ok that’s enough pictures”.

Well looks like my previous post could have been called, spot the geeks among our friends and loved ones. Plus the closeted geeks that emailed me the answer separately, you know who you are. The CMU crowd came out in force. For those complaining about the lack of a single possible solution, yes, common sense was required. When I next get their height’s confirmed I’ll have to do another word math problem that’s a bit trickier. The correct answers were 16 and 32 lbs.

Here’s what the girls look like, well, today. Took this shot this afternoon on a rainy day where Josie was being a little to rough with everyone and Celia couldn’t stop whining that she can’t get up and walk away. She’s literally trying to rock herself to her feet while she sits. They’re asleep, we made it through.

Right now Celia’s favorite game is ’empty the shoe box’. I fill up a shoe box full of baby toys and she pulls them out and explores them and dumps it on the floor. She chews on everything. It’s a good game, especially when it lasts a long time. Sometimes I ruin it by putting the things back in the box and she cries, silly mommy trying to clean things.

Peekaboo, walking and bouncing/jumping are the other favorites currently.