Esme in Action

     Esme has been hard at work learning some new skills.  Eating has become one of her favorite things to do, and by eating, I'm not talking about bottles anymore.  At our four month check-up, the doctor told us that she was at an age that she could start solid foods, but that we shouldn't push that unless Esme was clearly showing an interest -- which she had been doing for several weeks at that point.  So we started with 'single foods' -- baby foods that have only one ingredient -- as I mentioned a few posts back, but we have moved up to multi-ingredient foods by now.

     One of her favorites is banana / peach / raspberry mixed with rice cereal.  She can eat two or three heaping teaspoons of that in just a few minutes.  (Don't worry, the heaping teaspoons aren't going into her mouth -- we offer her much smaller bites.)  It astounds me that the total mess that used to accompany feeding time has narrowed down to a localized mess centered around her mouth.  (Okay, it still spreads a little beyond that, especially if we're not vigilant about keeping her hands out of the process, but whereas it was hard to tell at the beginning whether food was going down her throat or just being spread around her face, bib, and tray, it is now clear that almost all of the food is actually being swallowed!)  I made one attempt at capturing the feeding process on video, and instead of making you sit through the whole ten minute video, I tried to edit it down to one minute with two clips.  I hope I was successful...

     Some other big news is that Esme is flipping herself over regularly now, and she's starting to work on the concept of locomotion.  At this point it's still mostly semi-random flailing, but there's definitely some effort to get somewhere, with the accompanying distress when she realizes it's not happening quite how she envisioned it.  (There was another video that showed her having greater success, but that was in the middle of a diaper change, so you'll have to settle for this one, in which she is fully clothed, but doesn't get her knees under herself.)

     That's the Esme news for now, though there is so much more going on.  I wish I had time to share it all with you, but I suppose if you want to see much more, you'll find some time to come visit us here in Ann Arbor.  For now, I'll leave you with a smile.