Play Time
Here are some recent play time pics for all you Joshua-philes out there. As you 'll see from the following photos, Joshua loves both animals and books.... mostly in his mouth.
Chewing on Winnie the Pooh
Joshua relaxes admist his books as he ponders what important task to tackle next
"Don't you look at me like that, Pooh. I'll come over there and get you."
The Hippo Hunter and his prey
Joshua and Mr. Hippo shake hands in a brief moment of mutual accord...
...before Joshua breaks the peace and decides to gnaw on one of Mr. Hippo's limbsMeal Time
We recently started giving Joshua solid food and he seems to take to it with gusto. We started him off on boiled rice and then we jumped right into Chinese broccoli and carrots. He didn't really like plain mushed boiled carrots, probably because he has Daddy's "I hate boiled carrots because they are sooooo boring" gene. Sun mixed them in with the rice however, and he seemed to accept them readily enough. His diet is still primarily "Mommy Milk" but we are phasing in the "real food" a little bit at a time. He is a neat enough eater for a baby, although today he rather enjoyed turning around in his high chair after each spoonful and slobbering about half of it on the back of his chair. He is also highly skilled in dropping toys and other objects from the high chair within a matter of seconds of receiving them. He are a few pics of our forray into feeding the boy.
Happy Baby at the beginning of feeding time
The nobleman in his place of authority
To eat from the spoon that Mommy is holding out or to lunge for Daddy with the camera? So hard to decided - I think I'll do both!
Joshua has had just about enough boiled rice and mushed carrots for one meal. Thus he non-verbally communicates that he wants to get out of the chair.
I'd Rather Get a Shot
We took Joshua to a Thai hospital the other day to get his BCG vaccination (against tuberculosis). It is a rare vaccination in the States but all Thai children routinely get a BCG at birth because TB is much more common in this part of the world, especially in less developed neighboring countries like Laos and Cambodia. Joshua took the needle in the arm quite well and cried for only a moment. He is quite a trooper when it comes to injections. However, if you try to wipe his nose, it's a completely different story. He has had a runny nose for about a week and if you try to approach him with a tissue to wipe his face, he violently whips his head in the other direction. If you can actually grab hold of him long enough to wipe off the snot running down his face, he screams bloody murder as if we were trying to torture him. I find it quite interesting (read "strange") that he takes shots so well but not having his nose wiped. Then again, I suppose I don't see the world as a seven month old does.
Two Teeth and Other Developments
A brief update on the boy - he has two teeth now which he loves to use to gnaw on anything and everything. All his stuffed toys go straight into his mouth and get a rich drenching of slobber on a regular basis.
He is also sitting up quite well now which makes it challenging to put him down to sleep. We rock him, sing to him, and then lay him down in his crib but then he whines rolls over, and sits bolt upright and cries. I am no sleep expert, but unless you are a cow, it is awful hard to sleep sitting upright in the middle of a bed. Cows can sleep standing up but to my knowledge, Joshua has no bovine heritage. I have yet to convince him that sitting up is not condusive to sleep.
First Meal, First Time Sitting Up, Almost First Tooth
This has been a big week of firsts for Joshua. For the past month and half, he has been doing some serious teething and for the first time the top of one tooth is just barely starting to poke through. You can hardly see it, but when you put your finger on his bottom gum, it is jagged and hard.
Also, Joshua has progressively been able to sit up by himself and finally he can stay somewhat steady on his own without us holding him in place. Granted, it is not all that steady and is likely to flop over after a minute or so of sitting up but at least he can do it for a minute! With his newly acquired sitting up powers, we stuck him in a high chair and gave him his first taste of food today. He has been on a strick mommy milk diet up until now but has been hanking for some of what mommy and daddy are having for a while now. We boiled some rice until it was really really mushy and gave little bits on a spoon. He took to it like a duck to water. The spoon was barely to his mouth before he lunged forward and clamped his mouth around the spoon and sucked on it. Maybe he just wanted to suck on the spoon, but we'd like to believe that he wanted the food. So, we kept feeding him the rest that was in the bowl and he ate it all. More rice for the boy tomorrow.
Sitting Up In The Stroller
Joshua can't quite sit up on his own yet however we were glad to discover that he is big enough and strong enough to stay put in the harness of a regular stroller without slouching excessively. As you can see from his smile, Joshua much prefers it this way because he can more easily see the world than he could from lying on his back in the baby carrier.