Kael went to his first Birthday party this past Sunday

It was for the daughter of some of our old neighbors..she just turned 1..so she’s obviously just a few months older then Kael. We let him eat Ice Cream (which seems to be his favorite ‘big’ people food – after Cheerios). No cake for the little guy yet though.. We’ve decided to make him wait till his first birthday for cake. A big bonus from the party… we now know what ‘bigger’ toys Kael is interested in.. he kept trying to play with a few of Tess’ toys. His favorite seemed to be a riding/pushing ice cream truck. Pictures are here.

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Passover is this week, and the Big K got to go to his first sedars

Sedars are the big, fancy dinners held on the first 2 nights of Passover. The first night, we went to a friend of my Mom’s house, and since we didn’t know in advance what would be served (ok.. we knew some of it, since it seems everyone has at least a few of the same things) We didn’t let Kael eat anything except his formula and Cheerios (which, by the way, are pretty much the only solid food he gets excited about eating… He should get an endorsement)

The big excitement came Tuesday night, when we had the sedar dinner at my Mom’s house. At Kael’s last checkup, I double checked with the Dr. (who also happens to be Jewish) to see what food Kael would be able to eat at Passover. After getting the OK for the foods I wanted to feed him.. Janice and I talked to my mom, who would be doing all the cooking.. to make sure she cooked a couple small batches of foods without any seasonings, and with as few ‘extras’ as possible. Mainly, I wanted him to eat chopped liver, matzoh, and horseradish… I was overruled on the horseradish – something about melting the poor baby’s sinuses and taste buds. So, Kael’s Passover dinner consisted of Chopped liver, Matzoh, and Cheerios (which I don’t think are technically Kosher…but.. he’s not even 8 months old yet, so I don’t think it really matters.

There’s a .Mac photo-album posted (you can get to it here ) with all the pictures from the big night… but here’s my favorite so far:

This was taken right after his first bite of Chopped liver… guess it might not be his new favorite food!

Yep..the Big K has more teeth… And, he’s trying to walk!

We noticed them last night when Kael woke us up in the middle of the night, Janice saw a quick flash of white on his upper gum. This morning, we thought we’d take another peek (being fully awake and all, we figured we’d be better able to see) so, we hung him upside for a bit.. he started smiling and giggling, and there they were, just starting to peek through the gum… 2 of his upper teeth, one on the left side and one on the right side.

As for the walking.. apparently he’s grown bored with crawling after the 2 weeks he’s been doing it. He now tries to walk after pulling himself up. Which, really wouldn’t be so bad…except he’s got no balance whatsoever yet..so he proceeds to fall right down. He does, however, do a really good job walking when he’s either standing on his learn to walk toy, or walking while holding our hands…

So, I was working on updating the pictures of Kael on our homepage

The update is viewable here. And Janice comes out of the kitchen and looks into the living room where Kael was playing. Next thing I know she’s screaming “Oh My God” and I rush to look, thinking that Kael has jumped through the patio door, or climbed into the fireplace or some other such traumatic event. Turns out.. Kael has learned to pull himself into a standing position using the couch, and even did a little cruising up and down the couch. We’ve got some video and pictures of it, which we’ll get added to the site within the next day or so.. or…. possibly longer now that we have to spend a bit more time chasing Kael around….

So… on the heels of my last mention of crawling…

This past Friday, Janice called me at work to let me know that Kael’s stiff armed slow crawl… has improved to a full-blown baby hauling ass around the apartment crawl…..

And he still somehow manages to get into everything we don’t want him in…

His second tooth is starting to come in…. We were finally able to snap a picture showing him with his one tooth grin.. Its not the best picture.. but at least you can tell where the tooth is..

So… I kept meaning to baby proof before Kael started to crawl..

And.. it looks like I’m all out of time… at the end of last week, he was crawling – kind of – he was doing a commando style, dragging himself along by his arms sort of crawl…

And yesterday… his crawl has turned into something much closer to a real crawl…but not quite… he now moves along like an inchworm. He’ll stretch out with his arms..pull his legs and butt up and then push his arms forward and repeat the whole process. He’s not speedy gonzales by any stretch of the imagination…but it won’t be long now before he is zooming along.

I think…instead of baby proofing… I’ll just attach a big bungie cord to the center of the ceiling in the living room.. and then attach Kael to that so he can’t get near any of the wall outlets, sharp corners, dog food, doors, etc….

So… Kael has been working on getting his first tooth for a week or so now..

And its finally cut through his gum enough that you can see it when he smiles at you, instead of having to pry his jaw open and shove his tongue back to get a look at it. I’d post a picture of it, but our camera isn’t good enough for anyone to be able to see the tooth in the shot yet… (Hey… what do you expect, its like 4 years old and only 1.3mega pixels).

So…any day now.. the big K should discover what it feels like when he bites either his tongue, or one of his fingers from sticking ’em in his mouth and chomping down… and having been bitten by his not all the way there tooth before… it hurts! So I’m sure the little guy won’t enjoy it!

Figures… most kids get their driving lessons at 15 or 16…

Not Kael… he apparently wants to start driving before he can walk:

Obviously, the picture can’t show you the noises he was making, and I know it was completely coincidental but he sound like he was making engine noises while he was ‘steering’ the car… he’s such a ham..

Ok.. so technically, the big 6 month mark for Kael was yesterday…

But… his 6 month Dr. appointment was this afternoon.

So, we headed off to the Dr.’s office… Kael was weighed, measured, poked…prodded and pronounced to be an excellent example of a healthy baby! His official #s are: weight: 16 Lbs 9 Oz. 27 Inches tall, and a 44cm head. Physically he is developing normally… mentally, the Doc said he was exceptional! Of course..he was a big hit with the nurses, and he spent quite a bit of time flirting with them all.. he even let the nurse who gave him his shots hold him afterwards (after Janice had held him and calmed him down).

While we’ve started Kael on solid foods, we figured we’d check with the Dr. and see if he had any recommendations as far as timelines to add new foods etc… He said that Kael could start eating the ‘biter’s biscuits’ or sucking on a bagel.. but that it was also generally a good idea to follow the APA’s recommendations…but if we felt he was ready for more food we could try it..

So.. we went to the store, and bought him a box of biscuits… look for the pictures here in our most recent photo album update. There’s also some pictures of him eating Avocado (YUCK!)

Real Food!

Since Kael is 20 weeks old now, we figured we’d start him on real food

So, we got him some Rice cereal, mixed it up with his formula like your supposed to, and had something resembling pancake batter that had been left out for like a week or so! Then, we threw a bib on Kael, and started to feed him. Turns out, we really should have covered ourselves, and the furniture with plastic sheets…

And since that was so successful, we tried some more this morning:

And we must have done a better job mixing the Cereal this morning, because as you can see, Kael grabbed the spoon and tried to feed himself.

I suppose we’ll stick to Rice Cereal for a little while, and then move on to one of those yummy baby foods, like liquid carrots!