Workin' it like a nine month old...

Elinor went in today for her 6 month appointment and her doctor said she was behaving like a 9 month old. Go baby! She can roll both ways, sit up unassisted, eat first foods (applesauce, rice cereals, mashed banana), pass a toy from one hand to another, babytalk ("ahgoo"), and she is creeping across the floor. She is not officially crawling, as in using hands and knees, but she rocks back and forth, flops onto her belly, reaches, squirms forward--it all happens so fast--before you know she's grabbing your cell phone.

One of her tricks is to creep over to me and try to pull herself up, awkward and unsteady, to get me to pick her up. Talk about 9 month old behavior.

The creeping is important because we are always fending off concern that our babies are small. Elinor's growth curve had flattened a little bit--which is exactly what happens when babies hit the milestones of crawling and, later, walking. Are we worried? Not a bit. This girl is very independent. She really would rather feed herself but we are having trouble finding things that are safe for her to self-feed with. We are avoiding high-allergen foods such as corn, wheat, eggs, peanut butter as well as honey which isn't an allergen but can carry bacteria dangerous to infants. Well, there are all kinds of nifty products for self-feeders that melt and do not pose a choking hazard. But they all have wheat. Sheesh. What did I do with Zander?

I found rice crackers for babies which melt on contact with moisture--something we can probably get for a song at the local Chinese market. What's even more fun for Ellie is a glob of sweet potatoes on the high chair tray. It is, of course, not as much about hunger at this age. She just wants to do what we do.

In other equally important, if not more important, news, Zander started preschool yesterday. He is quite taken with his teacher and is already making friends. When we asked him what he did in school, he told us he ate a snack. "Carrots and strawberries."

Apparently my children are foodies.