He's Growing Up

I know there has been a long hiatus from the blog. When did holidays get so hectic? Pumpkin’s first Christmas was good, although he ended up getting sick. Since we were out of town, we took him to an urgent care where the doctor said he did not have another ear infection but she did put him on an antibiotic since he was developing a nasty cough. I still suspect he may have had a flare-up with his ears so I was glad that he was given the antibiotic. Pumpkin enjoyed the gifts (more so than the wrapping paper, which surprised me) and definitely enjoyed the attention from the legions of doting grandparents and aunts/uncles.

At the Pumpkin’s nine month appointment right before Christmas, our pediatrician told us he wanted to have him weaned off of baby foods and onto pure table foods, weaned off of the bottle and weaned off of formula by his twelve month appointment. Whoa, my world has been turned upside down!! He wants him drinking milk out of an open cup as well. The Pumpkin does pretty well out of an open cup when we hold it for him but even with us holding it, he ends up drenched by the end of the meal. I’ve gone to a triple bib technique- two cloth bibs and one vinyl bib but he still manages to become drenched around the neckline. How many outfit changes are we supposed to have during a day? Since Pumpkin is already in the twelve month sizes and is starting to outgrow some of those, we only have so many baby clothes that fit! I’m confused about the sizes since at his last appointment (which was right after a bout of a stomach virus) he was only in the 25th – 30th percentile in weight. The table food transition is also daunting, although we have been making all of his baby food and keeping it at more of a chopped vs. pureed consistency. A friend referred me to an excellent website: http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ which I think will give me some good ideas about how to proceed on the nutrition front.

We have been trying to give the Pumpkin as much organic and preservative/chemical-free food as possible. At least the table food transition should get all of us to eat healthier! A good blog I found for more organic baby products is: http://greenmomfinds.com/ We have not gone extreme on the green side of baby products but we’re trying to incorporate more and more as we read more about the hidden dangers in all of the products we use. We’ll see what type of reasonable balance we’re able to strike.