7 months old

"Here I am, look how big I am getting!"

"Hmmm, that paper looks appetizing."

Nom, nom, nom.

"Almost done."

"Do I have anything on my face?"


Wow, we have come so far in this past month! The biggest changes in this past month have definitely been with Donovan's physical abilities. As mentioned several weeks ago Donovan has mastered sitting and is now an expert! But he was not satisfied to just stay sitting. He is now getting up on all fours (hands and knees) and rocking back and forth. He started this about a week ago and does it with ease now. It won't be long before he is crawling, which is going to be a big wake up call to us as we haven't baby proofed a thing. Yikes!

In other news this past few weeks Donovan has been very fussy and clingy. He starts yelling if you leave the room and he can't see you, and he wants to be held the majority of the time. What happened to our sweet, happy all the time baby? I think the fussy part is due to the fact that he is realizing that he isn't as mobile as he wants to be so he is frustrated that he can't get from here to there as fast as he wants. I am hoping that the fussiness subsides when he becomes a crawler. This is a picture I took of Donovan yelling at me for not holding him.

As of a week and a half ago we are no longer doing any overnight feedings. I finally was ready to be done with them. He still wakes up overnight, but I let him cry himself back to sleep, which he seems to do in less and less time every night. So overall he now sleeps (read: stays in bed at least) from 9-9:30 until at least 6:30. If he wakes for a feeding around 6:30 he will go back down until 9ish but he generally wakes up sometime in the 8 o'clock hour and starts his day after that feeding.

For solid meals, we are still doing just two main meals a day, with a third one sprinkled in every once in a while when he acts like he needs one. He generally eats better in the evenings but he is doing better at eating well in the mornings recently. We try to get him to eat 2 tbs cereal and a whole container of fruit in the mornings, which he has been doing wonderfully at these past few days. In the evening, he eats at least 2 tbs cereal and a container of veggies and then sometimes more fruit. Last night he ate 1 tub of veggies, his 2 tbs of cereal and a whole tub of fruit! That is a lot of food! We have also introduced finger foods as of about 3 weeks ago. We give him these tiny puffs of cereal and he was not a big fan until last night. Up until last night he would pick them up, bring them to his mouth, then throw his hand over the side of the highchair and drop them overboard. Then we would try to put one in his mouth and he would clamp his mouth shut or just move around so it was hard to hit our target. At one sitting, he would at most eat 2 puffs with our help, but he definitely didn't like it and thought the texture was weird. He has only successfully eaten 2 puffs that he got in his mouth on his own. Last night we had a breakthrough. I would put a puff in his mouth, he would chew it and eat it and then open his mouth for more. This has NEVER happened before! He ended up eating about 15 puffs last night so I think the persistence has paid off! I am interested to see if he likes them again today or last night was just a freak occurrence.

One last thing worth mentioning that you may have noticed from the first group of pictures in this post is that Donovan is a big fan of paper products for playing and eating purposes. That being said, he LOVES getting the mail, as it is like a trip to the toy isle for him. He just rips and chews magazines, paper, pamphlets to his little heart's desire. I figure if he actually swallows a little piece it is just a little fiber to help things move along.

A few weeks ago a friend of our family had her Bat Mitzvah and we were lucky enough to be invited to attend. My parents came in town for the event and here are some pictures of us looking nice and dressed up.



Donovan also got his first shoulder ride from Grandpa during the weekend they were in town. He loved it!


Poor Donovan. I bought him some jeans and I wanted to try them on him to make sure I got the right size. Well apparently I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been when I put them on because after they were all the way up, I realized that they were so tight because I had both legs in one of the pant leg. Silly mama. At least we know he would make a cute mermaid (merman).


Oh there's that other leg of the pants. We will try to use that one too next time we wear them :)


Overall this past month has been a very fun month to watch Donovan grow. I just hope he takes it easy on us this next month since it will probably be our last month of relative calm before the mobility storm!