Welcome!

I've been meaning to set one of these up for months so that y'all can keep up with Ethan and see how fast he's growing:

He'll be 7 months old on Friday...already! Our baby is getting so big. He's about 17 pounds now, based on our home scale.

He got his 2 bottom front teeth the week before Christmas, and he's been sitting on his own since the Saturday before Thanksgiving. He's getting up on hands and knees now, but he hasn't figured out what to do next. He'll be crawling soon, though! We need to get to babyproofing!!

He started eating rice cereal at 4 and a half months (doctor's recommendation) to try to help him with his constant spitting up. It didn't really help, but he looooves to eat, so we started introducing veggies. He started on peas, then carrots and sweet potatoes. He was ok with peas at first, but he hates them now and will only eat them if mixed with something else. He started fruits a few weeks after veggies. I think we started with apples, then pears and bananas. He's not so crazy about pears and apples, but he loves bananas! So does Grandma Ofie, if I remember correctly...right Mom? This past Sunday, we got him some baby Oatmeal, and he's liking the new cereal. He'll be eating Cheerios soon!

I've also been making a lot of his baby foods. I prefer to feed him organic foods, so it's much less expensive to just make them rather than buy jarred ones. I've made sweet potatoes, acorn squash, carrots (he didn't like my carrots...threw them up!), and bananas. I just made him some apples, pears and beets, but they are in the freezer right now. I hope he likes them!

So far, Ethan is a very social baby. He needs lots of interaction and always wants to be held. He's getting a lot better about needing to be held now that he can sit up to play. But when he's sleeping, he needs someone right there with him or else he gets upset and won't sleep. We're working on that, but it's been tough on all of us! But overall, his need for interaction has made him into a really sweet, friendly kiddo. He's a big flirt at his playgroup, and we get lots of comments from strangers about how cute he is because he's constantly smiling at and talking to everyone. He wants to engage them...he's a real charmer!

Bedtime, so more later!