frown One week to go and we'll celebrate Jolan's first birthday. Time for some updates on how things are going?

The little man is now crawling on all fours, usually in search of some mischief to accomplish. In a house which is all stairs and no closed cupboard, you can imagine... We're trying to teach him that NO really means NO. He knows which are the restricted area and objects, but he still tries. And whines when we don't allow him to approach.

He's also close to walking alone on his two small legs. I know we've been saying that for the last month or two, but he's more cautious than expected, and although he started early, he does take the time to learn balance. He does get around with the help of the furniture, or anything rising higher than his butt ( 6-packs of 2 liter soda are perfect) but 5 steps alone has been his record for a month now.

I still breastfeed him. He's trying to become a champion in acrobatic suckling, but at least he knows he's not supposed to bite the nipple with his 5 teeth. As a consequence, he just started to sleep through most of the night, but he still needs either a breast or a car ride to fall asleep.

At 6 months, we started with semi-solid food. Enthousiastic good parents as we were, we had planned to feed him only home made soup. The system worked quite nicely for a while. We steamed or boiled the vegetables and meat, each separately, then froze them in the ice cube container, and stored the cubes in labeled bags in the freezer. Then for each meal, we only had to take 2 or three cubes, from the same or different flavours, 1 min in the microwave and ready to eat. But when he was 8 months old, we went on a long weekend trip to Switzerland, and took industrial babyfood with us. After we returned, we were so tired, we just went on buying his food ready made. And I have to admit, with the choice they offer, it's fun choosing his meals: he's be eating couscous, paella, pot au feu, etc...

The first month we gave him only vegetables: carrot, courgette, leek and pumpkin, and apples or pears for pudding. At 7 months, we started with dairy products and white meat and fish. At 8 we introduced potatoes, pasta, rice. Now we started to give him small bits of whatever is suitable from our plates. Boiled potato, steamed vegetables, fresh fruits, cheese, ham and especially bread.

He needs time to get used to people he doesn't know. Smiles are not given easily. First you'll get a frown, especiallly if you meet him outside while he's in his pushchair, unless you are a young and pretty lady with dark hair and narrow face, in which case you might get a smile right away. We went to listen to a concert in park nearby a few weeks ago. We met some colleagues with babies as well. Joe was all frown and not really cooperating. To demonstrate how well he could crawl, we left him a few paces away on the lawn, believing he would come back to us right away. As you can see in the picture, he just stayed there frowning on us, with the bottle he had managed to grab in my bag just as I was carrying him away.

Little guy is growing fast

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