Zaeda at 6 months, solid food and Oliver’s antics

Zaeda turned 6 months old on Thanksgiving. We celebrated by giving her mashed bananas. She wasn’t too sure about it and after a few bites it all came back up. We tried again the next day but no luck. We finally resorted to rice cereal and all is well. She gets very excited when we hold the spoon in front of her; sometimes she gets so worked up that her whole body shakes.

We went to the pediatrician and her stats are-

Height- 2’3” (89%)
Weight- 16 lb 3.5 oz (54%)
Head Circumference- 16.73” (51%)
She loves to talk, growl and squeal. Her range is varied and fun to listen too. She's sitting up completely unassisted. Being pulled to standing is still her favorite activity but we just located Oliver’s old baby toys and she has been playing with a variety of them. If she sees something she wants, she just reaches for it. The other day she almost toppled over face first in an effort to grab some keys. Great-Grandma Zaeda gave her her first baby doll and Zaeda spends a lot of time with the baby’s foot, shirt or hand in her mouth.

Oliver continues to amuse us as well. His toilet training is going pretty well—some days are better than others. Tonight I found him in his usual corner doing his “business.” When I asked him what he was doing, he admitted the obvious and then added, “and talking to myself.”
He has also learned that items put on higher shelves are not necessarily out of reach if you use a chair or toy crates stacked upon each other.

He is stubborn at times and recently told both me and Keith on separate occassions that he didn’t want us telling him what to do. I had hoped that we wouldn’t reach that stage for about 10 more years.

He's very curious about reading and sounds out the letters on signs and in books. He often tells Keith during storytime, “No, I want to do it (read) myself.”

Recent Oliver quips:

• "Yes sir!"


• "Poopy!" ( repeated, sung aloud, or as the primary topic of any conversation -- all we had to say was that it was sometimes not a good word to use, and it shot to the front of his vocabulary)


• "Vacaroom" -- the noisy thing we use to clean the carpet.


• Tofu ="toe-food"


• "Why?" and "what?" -- Why is it dark? Why is the moon coming up? What is a prince? What is a king? Which led to a discussion about Robin Hood where Oliver said it was bad to take money from people. This doesn’t seem to apply to Oliver as he is always taking coinsoff of Keith’s nightstand.
  

Our weekends in December are already looking busy (How can that be!) so we decided to get our tree this past weekend. I usually consider it a bit sacriligious to put up a tree before December but we just didn’t know when we could get it done. Oliver LOVED decorating the tree this year. When Keith was putting on the lights, Oliver remarked how handsome the tree looked. He did a good job decorating the tree—most of the ornaments were in one section about 2 ½ feet off the floor in about a space 3 feet wide. When we were finished, he looked up at the tree and told me that our tree was beautiful. After so many years of tree decorating, you forgot how beautiful a Christmas tree can look. Just another reason to slow down and enjoy these few evenings before Christmas.