7 months

Selena is now 7 months old and the last month has been filled with trying new foods and trying to crawl. It is very hard for her and she gets quite frustrated, but she is getting the hang of it and I am sure any day now she will be cruising all over.

Her other great adventure is eating real food. Of course, like anything else, there are lots of "philosophies" on how to feed your baby. The traditional American way is to start with rice cereal and progress through the various jars of baby food. At first I thought I would make my own baby food, pureeing it in a blender. I checked out some books at the library on how to make baby food and how to freeze and store it. I even bought a food mill to chop up stuff on the go.



However my mom said that I didn't need baby food and I should just give her anything that you can smash with a fork and she'd be fine. Then some ladies on Babycenter said you didn't even need to cut up the food into small pieces you could just give them a big chunk and see what they did with it. So I've done a little bit of everything. I started with the purees for about 3 weeks and then I started giving her small bites, but she had a hard time grabbing them, so I gave her a few whole pieces of food, like broccoli, a banana, and an apple. She like the first two, but the apple was frustrating for her. Now her pinchy pinchers are working better so she can handle the small bites again. So I've pretty much given up on the purees and just try to make sure that we eat something she can have too.
She enjoys it, and will object when I don't give her the same thing we are having. It is amazing how she'll put the food in her mouth and "chew" it with her gums and swallow it. Sometimes she will stuff A LOT of food in her mouth and I get worried she'll choke. She may gag a little, but she ends up handling it by swallowing or spitting it back out. It is very impressive, well at least to me it is. :)