7 Months!!

                                             Keller feeds himself.
                                              Keller tries to feed Spot.
The classic shot.

My two favorite smiles!!

This has been quite an eventful past month for us.  I can't believe Mr. Keller is on the upswing now to 1 year...how time flies.  It's crazy because at every moment and stage and phase so far, when I hold my little boy, it's like I want him to stay just that sweet and little forever, but he grows and learns a little every day and I continue to fall in love with the new him day after day.  I love how interactive he is now, how much he smiles and how curious he is...who knew how fascinating wires could be and who knew how bitter dandelion stems could be.  Yes, I confess to having tasted one yesterday after pulling one away from Keller's mouth as we played with all the dandelions Chase was picking for us...Keller is definitely in the Everything In The Mouth phase and Trav and I wonder why it is that this is such an integral part of exploration.  I find myself wondering what he is tasting as he puts item after item into his mouth...I learned one thing this week though---dandelion stem=bitter (gross, if I were a baby, I wouldn't put one in my mouth again)!

Keller has been getting much better about reaching for things as he sits on the floor and after a couple of weeks of head-thunks, he has learned to extend one leg outward and put one hand down as he is reaching from a sitting postition---good boy.  He officially pulled himself up to standing entirely on his own the other day on Chase's train table--so excited was he when he saw the whole new world of trains and tracks within his reach!  He is now an "active sleeper" in his regular baby sleeping bag (as opposed to the swaddle bag).  He rolls and scoots around and often sleeps on his belly.  This morning, Trav made the new rule that says no more stuffed animal in the crib (yeah, we were breaking that rule, too, so he would have someone to talk to/play with when he woke up) but apparently he managed to wedge himself in the corner of the crib and fall back asleep face down on Spot.  Sorry Spot, no more crib for you--for now at least!

And as for eating big boy food goes, he's well on his way.  He loves his rice cereal which he eats solo as the doctor says it's good for him to develop a taste for straight up grains.  Avocados came next since Trav and I just happened to be eating one ourselves.  They were good the first night but the next night gave us a quick scare as he ate and ate and then totally gagged and threw-up all of his eats.  Same happened with sweet peas...we'll have to try again in a couple of weeks I guess.  He loved his carrots (which made his poo AND his hiney orange) and applesauce--yum!  I guess we'll do sweet potatoes next since Trav and I made a bunch the other day.  Fun fun!

    Wait a minute...This isn't that sweet yummy carrot stuff or even that cereal I was expecting...

I'm not sure about this...It was on the spoon and I know the spoon was supposed to go into my mouth and all...

(The next day) Gross! You did it to me again!!  It's that nasty green stuff!  I don't like it one bit!!

That stuff CAN'T be edible...

Don't worry, we didn't photograph the total gag and puke...

And one more cute food-related thing...Keller has become the master of ripping his bib off.  Most of the time it is when he is just about done eating anyway so I thought it might be his way of saying he's done, but tonight at dinner, even after he had taken his bib off and Trav was going to feed him more, he started pulling at his shirt as if it was the bib and tried tearing his shirt off.  So I went from thinking my boy was such a genius for the bib-cue "I'm done" to thinking he's just a baby who doesn't really know what the heck is really going on!