Day 155 2/11/11 Juicy

Michael gets very excited when there is food or drink around now. He loves to hold his bottle and try to drink from it or at least chew the teat like mad.
We made him some very dilute fruit juice today and he had a great time playing with it and actually drank about a quarter of the bottle. There is a moment when he first gets a taste and he screws up his face and gives me a look like "What the flippin' heck is THAT!" but then he goes on to drink it so it can't be all bad. Just a surprising taste I guess.



Here's the video evidence

Day 154 1/12/11 Grumpy Shopping

Rocio, Michael and volunteer Mandy went shopping today. Just up the road at the coop. I'm told he didn't like being in the shop itself but enjoyed the walk home afterwards. Perhaps he would have liked even more walking because when he got home he cried and cried until he fell asleeep. Later Michael was in the manta on Rocio's back for a long time quite contented whilst Rocio did jobs and made bread.

Day 153 30/11/11 Crawling

Rocio tells me that Michael is learning to turn himself onto his front and can sometimes crawl bit now albeit backwards. I'd never see this though so I tried him today. I put Michael on his front and gave him a favourite toy to look at. He got very upset almost straight away and that was the end of that. My boy is very sure of himself and if he realy doesn't want something there's no talking him into it. Here's a picture I managed to get before the shouting began.

Day 152 29/11/11 Night Garden

Michael really likes to come and sit on me at the computer these days. We usually find something to watch. At the minute Michael likes "In the night garden" It's really taken over from Tellytubbies. We watch in Spanish of course and Michael sits rapt for all of it except the Pontipines. These seem to bore him and he gets distracted. I guess most of the rest are things he can see as people but the pontipines are little wooden pegs and don't look like or move lite people at all. That's my theory when he doesn't watch them.

We had another successful go at giving Michael solid food. The operation is quite messy but fun for us both and he does eat something. There is also some evidence that Michael digests it too but I'll not talk about that here.

Day 151 28/11/11 Marrow

We didn't take Michael to his peek-a-boo group today as he still has a bit of a cold. It doesn't seem to bother him at all except he can't feed so well. He seems to choke on the milk quite often and he snores at night. It must mean he can't breath well. He has still got a bit of a snotty nose but there is no way he will let me pick it for him !



Rocio's Mum recommended us to give him marrow as his first food and after a bit of searching we found one yesterday and Rocio cooked it today. She served it up into lots of little plastic containers and froze most of them. I gave Michael some sitting on my lap. He really enjoyed it I think. He was very excited about the spoon and kept grabbing it and making the whole thing much more difficult. It was very hard to get the spoon to his mouth without him interfering and if I gave him the spoon the marrow would fall off. We worked out int he end that if I held the spoon Michael could pull my hand towards him when he wanted the food and that way it all worked out well. It was still very messy and he still spat a lot of it out and probably only swallowed a few tea spoons worth but he enjoyed it and ate some so that's a success.

Day 150 27/11/11 Walk in the woods

We went for a walk in the woods again today. Michael well wrapped up in the papoose and Rocio and me with our walking boots on this time. We were trying to get to a wind farm next to the woods as I really wanted to stand under the big wind mills to hear then spin but we couldn't get near. This things are much bigger than I thought and so further away then I realised.
Like last time we went for a cup of coffee and something to eat before walking. This is not traditional I know but we never make it out of the house very early and if we waited until we had gone for our walk to cafe would be closed. Again Michael had a little bit of bread to suck on and enjoyed sitting up at the table with us whilst we ate.



When he got a bit bored I took him for a stroll around the gift shop where he grabbed the most expensive wind chime in the place and didn't want to let go. We have to be more and more careful with what he can grab these days. He's got a long reach and strong grip when he wants.
The walk went very well and Michael slept for most of it in the papoose. We did get lost on the way back to the car as it was getting dark. All my fault for taking a shortcut through the woods with no path. We had to follow the sounds of the main road to get back which took much longer than it took to get there.

Day 149 26/11/11 Cold and cakes

Michael has a cold. He probably doesn't know he has a cold but he is not his usual self at all. He's never had a cold before just the little illnesses he had after having immunisations. He's got a snotty nose and he snores when he's sleeping and he's just not as bouncy as we are used to.
We went into town today to do our regular Saturday wandering about shopping and we did get a few things done but Michael didn't want to be in the pushchair he wanted carrying all the time and even then he wasn't having any fun. We did go to a cafe in the market and Michael shared our toasted tea cakes. He was very very keen on holding the bits of cake we gave him and managed to get quite a bit into his mouth for sucking on too. He is definitely ready for a little bit of solid food.

Still in general he wasn't having ab good time and we felt a bit sorry for him and went home earlier than usual.