Late seven-month update

The night of Simon’s six-month appointment, we started with the baby food and fed him some vegetables. We chose squash first, only because Harmon liked it, but Simon wasn’t so into it. He liked it the first night – probably because it was something different – but he didn’t really dig it after that. We then moved on to (in this order) carrots, sweet potatoes, peas and green beans. Next was the fruit, which, surprise, went much better. He had, in this order: peaches, bananas, prunes, pears and applesauce. He’s now ready to start with the Stage 2 foods and to move to three meals a day consisting of two servings each of cereal, fruits and vegetables.

As we were working our way through the foods, all kinds of other things were happening. On June 3, he spoke his first word – dada. It happened on a Wednesday so, when I called my Mom to check on him, I got to hear it over the phone. My Mom claims he also said mama but I’m not so sure. I’ve heard dada many times since then but have not heard mama. I hope he’ll say it for me soon!

He’s awesome with the rolling-over thing – belly to back and back to belly. We’ve found him many times on his back in his crib when we get him in the morning. Harmon was a huge roller (in lieu of crawling) so I’m wondering if Simon will be the same way. He does, however, have more leg movement than Harmon did so maybe he won’t wait until 10 months to crawl.

Now that we’ve been through a little more than half a year with Simon, we were thinking about the differences between him and Harmon. Besides the obvious – like Simon being pasty white with blue eyes (at least so far) – Simon is hungry all the time! He is ravenous, no matter what. It’s like he knows he has to play catch-up or something. Maybe because of this hunger, you cannot take a drink of anything while holding him because he’ll have his hands all over it. Harmon was never the least bit interested in sitting up but Simon prefers to sit up as often as he can. He especially loves to sit up in his stroller on the porch and watch his big brother take batting practice every night. Simon has one small character flaw and that is that he HATES to be alone. On bad days, he’ll cry if you break eye contact with him. Mostly, though, he requires that SOMEONE be in the room with him at all times. If not, he’ll cry and, when Simon cries, he quickly produces real tears. It’s very sad. Fortunately for us, though, this is pretty much the only time he cries because, overall, he is the happiest baby we’ve ever seen. He wakes up smiling, smiles most of the day and goes to bed smiling too! While Harmon was happy, Simon is happier.