Robin Artemis photo gallery

Seventh month, play and food, 11 October - 11 November, 2011

This is probably a day when Robin's sister is at daycare, because he's getting to play with the books uninterrupted. He loves books, but Sparrow tends to take them off him. This particular set of books are not terribly valuable so I don't mind him chewing them to bits. He is having fun trying to "read" them though, the way his sister does, and I had to take pictures.

OK, that's a better reading angle.

Playing outside on the balcony. Robin is doing lots of this pushing up and getting his whole body off the ground, and the weather's gotten nicer finally, so I'm trying to go out on the balcony a bit and just put a rug or towel down to make it a little less rough and hard. He does tend to pull the blankets around though so it's not as effective as it could be.

Again, a day Sparrow is either at daycare or having a very long nap, because I've managed to clean the book room. I need to vacuum conscientiously now that he is semi-mobile and getting into things, and this was the first time I'd managed to vacuum up ready for him to become fully mobile. Robin is enjoying playing in the uncluttered space.

There's lots of room to move, to roll around and spread out.

And to practice getting from on your tummy to sitting position. I think he might have worked out how to do that this month, so sitting became a lot more fun once he could get there himself.

At Music for Munchkins. Nominally it's Sparrow's music class, but several of us have young babies so there is always a parade of onlookers. I usually have Robin strapped to me which is much easier to manage, but this day I tried putting him in the stroller. So we had this long row of strollers - Robin, Zach, Lilah, Henrietta. Robin is kicking along to the music and enjoying it well enough, but by the end of the class all the mums had their babies on the floor.

Food. Food was a big thing this month. Robin had been having some solid food for a little while now, but just the very early limited stuff while his digestive system caught up to things. This month he could have any vegetables he liked, and also legumes and beans (though that was more towards the end of the month). I think that's mango he's eating, though it could be something else. Possibly even mango puree - while I don't puree most of his food, when mangos came in season both kids loved them so much that I made sure to get a bunch of soft ones, puree them and freeze them to have on other occasions. I think this is some of the leftover puree that didn't fit in the freezer box.

Actually, looking at it again, it's not just puree. As in this photo, it's polenta that's been cooked in water and then had the mango mixed into it. He loved that. Both kids liked polenta, and I have tried to encourage a highly multi-grain diet at this stage (and in general) with both of them. James took this photo while I was tutoring. I started tutoring a new student on Wednesday afternoons around kid-feeding time, so James got to serve Robin a few meals to tide him over until my nipples came home. It takes two spoons - one for him to hold while you are getting food on the second. Sparrow was the same, but there's one crucial difference: she seemed to see the spoon as the object that generated food, and wanted control of it for that. Robin very clearly saw the spoon as a tool that needed a bowl-food-generator to go with it, so while he tried to wrest control of the spoon just the same his first action was always to try and stick the spoon in the bowl for food.

It's my broccoli, all mine. I didn't get a photo with any better focus but I loved this expression so I included this one anyway.

I have a leaf. Gnom-nom-nom.

Silverbeet leaf and potato pieces. That might be cauliflower that he's holding. Finger food requires great concentration.

Still got my leaf.

Baby vampire! Not sure what that is, possibly a bit of poppadum (which he was not terribly inspired by). This is another while-tutoring-meal, so it's whatever James was feeding him that day.