Week 19

July 15-21

At the beginning of this week we decided it was time to start Jack on rice cereal. Pediatrician's recommend 4-6 months as a general guideline, but the decision should really be based on your baby's physical milestones. Some things to consider: if your baby has good head/neck control on his own, can he sit up (supported) for a substantial period of time, can he lift his head up and move it around when on his tummy, etc. Jack has pretty much always had good neck support and since we started tummy time at a very early age he is comfortable using these muscles.

Of course breastmilk is still his main calorie source so I feed him before sitting him in his chair to eat cereal. Ed was especially excited about this developmental milestone because now he can be more involved in feeding Jack. Here are some pictures of Jack's first food from a spoon. I have a very cute video but last night I tried to upload it a million times and it wouldn't work. I will go ahead and post the blog with the pictures and keep working on video.

The plan is to feed Jack cereal once a day for a week, then move to twice a day for a week, and then move on to stage 1 baby foods. I am still considering making my own baby food. I am going to get some more information on how to do it and make my decision from there. We have decided that we will start him on vegetables first, and then move on to fruits. There are two different schools of thought about the subject. Some people say start with fruits because they are sweet and babies are more receptive to them. Others think that if you start with fruits they will be used to the sweet taste and won't be as receptive to vegetables. There is really no right or wrong way to do it. Every baby is different. I will update more when we get to that point.

Week 18

July 8-July 14

The start of this week marks Jack turning 17 weeks!! On Saturday July 11th he will be 4 months old! :) He is getting so big and growing soooo fast! So far going back to work has been a fairly smooth transition thanks to our wonderful babysitter Devin. She does such a great job with him and it makes me feel comfortable leaving him. I will have to get a picture of them together for the blog. The sad part about everything is that Devin has to go back to PA in the fall to finish up school. We're going to have to find someone to take over and it makes me very nervous to start all over again. Hopefully we will find someone else.

This week Jack has some visitors coming to see him. Uncle Ryan (Godfather) and Aunt Amanda are driving down from SC tomorrow. I will add more to this blog entry as the week goes by. Meanwhile, here are some 17 week old pictures I took today. Jack finally fits into his little jeans I bought him awhile back. Soooo cute!! His latest thing is trying to grab his feet and also grabbing toys and putting them straight into his mouth. He eats everything that he can get ahold of.

**Added Update

Here are some pictures of our visit with Uncle Ryan & Aunt Amanda. They came down to visit us and also celebrate their 1 year wedding anniversary. They brought down the top to their wedding cake that they had frozen for the past year. Here are some pictures.

While they were here we had a fun game night and ordered Cibelli's pizza (yum!)...then the next day we went bowling! It was a lot of fun!

Week 17

July 1-July 7

Happy 4th of July!! We had a great weekend with friends. Ed and I both had the entire weekend off so we started off the day early by cooking a bunch of food. At 1:00 we headed over to meet up with some new friends. Hung out for awhile, then came back over to our house to get ready for people to come over. Our next door neighbors were having a bunch of people over to their house too, so we combined the parties into one. We had good food, a keg, and some fireworks. We were all set!