7.75 (septième moisniversaire plus more than half a month)

Mon petit Benjamin,

If I were to pick a few words to describe you at 7 months, I'd have to start with enthusiastic. You explore the world with gusto and laughter, throwing yourself (often literally) at new things you want to touch, rotate in your hands, and, of course, taste. Your big blue eyes are always wide open, taking everything in.

You are a joyful child -- we've had several strangers comment on what a happy baby you are. In fact, the doctor who delivered you met you again recently and asked if you are always so happy. Others have noted that you are very alert and are often surprised to learn your age. People have been commenting on your alertness since you were just a few months old and I must admit that I wonder if BabyPlus contributed to your wide-eyed fascination with... well, with everything. We'll never know, but I guess it makes how annoying that machine was the last months a little less of an irksome memory.

This month (and then some) has, of course, been full of changes and new adventures (both in babyhood and parenting). For example, you do seem happy (or intent) most of the time, but I've seen the first signs of anger. Sometimes you desperately want my tea mug and when I won't give it to you, you cry loudly and sort of bang your legs and arms. I'm hoping that you won't learn to use your new teeth when you get angry because they are much sharper than I expected. In fact, a few days ago your papa let you have a baby carrot thinking all you would do was suck. He was keeping a close eye on you when he realized you were gnawing on it and getting a tiny bit of carrot. You were pretty upset when he took it away.

It's been a lot of fun introducing you to new foods and I'm feeling a little impatient because we've more or less run out of new things for you to try until next month (though we will try mangoes soon). The first bite of something new usually triggers a grimace, but you warm up to the new taste fairly quickly. On the menu: oatmeal and barley cereals, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, and green beans (though you aren't terribly fond of the latter, which I understand considering that green bean mush pretty much tastes like grass -- and I love green beans usually), pears, bananas, apples, peaches, apricots, and prunes. All of these fruits and vegetables are, of course, served to you as purées, more often than not homemade (I cook the veggies and fruit, put them through the food processor, and then freeze them in an ice cube tray).


Your favorite food, hands down, is banana, but unfortunately banana (as well as apple and cooked carrot) is "binding", so you don't get it very often and when you do, it's mixed with pear (which you also love)-- your papa calls it "pear-ana" (pronounced like "piranha" ). After a few "binding" experiences you now get prunes every morning and a mixture of water and apple juice during the day. Fortunately, you seem to like both of these. I initially watered down the apples juice a lot thinking that what was important was the liquid, but then found out that there is something in the juice itself that helps your little problem. I'll have to make sure to give you just plain water sometimes.

Things have not all been rosy when it comes to eating. Sometimes you don't want to nurse and/or eat your solids, and I have no idea why. Teething? Because you have a cold? Not enough milk there? Just not hungry? I think the most difficult thing for me about nursing (other than certain wrestling sessions to get you to nurse) is that I don't know how much milk you're getting.

You have also emptied the contents of your tummy twice. The first time was on the second day of eating squash. We were shopping and you were getting fussy, so I bought my items and went to find the car in the parking lot (I couldn't remember where I had parked), at which point you emptied the whole orange contents of your stomach on my chest. The question now is whether or not you are allergic to squash. Squash is one of the first vegetables pediatricians recommend because there is a low allergy risk. Most food allergies cause a reaction with 3 to 4 hours, this happened about 3 hours after you ate. We stopped feeding you squash (which you really liked) and on a nurse's recommendation are waiting a while to retry it. [Note: Feb. 28 is the first day we've tried again and so far so good.]

The culprit may not have been the squash, but the rice cereal. One week later, you went to bed just fine only to wake with a strange cry that brought me hurrying into your room to find you covered in vomit. We cleaned you up, changed you and then... more vomit. So we wrapped you in a towel to wait until your stomach finished emptying itself, and your papa rushed to CVS to buy some Pedialyte so that we could rehydrate you (from now on we will always have an unopened bottle of it in the house!). We gave you minute amounts of the apple-flavored stuff every 15 minutes over a nearly 2 hour period, then, once we were sure it would stay down, let you have a few ounces before putting you back to bed -- this time in your Pack'n Play in our room so we could keep an eye on you.

We think that since you ate dinner slowly and rice cereal becomes pasty quickly (or I overcooked it), it didn't settle well in your tummy. The day you threw up squash all over my shirt you had also had rice cereal, so you might not be allergic to squash, just sensitive to the glue-like nature of the cereal. And yet rice cereal is recommended as the very first solid a baby gets in the US... The Baby Whisperer recommends pears, which seem more digestible to me, but we did start you off with cereal.

Things are also not rosy for a funnier and harmless reason: your skin is taking an orangish-yellow hue (particularly the tip of your nose) because of all the sweet potatoes you eat. You have, as a college friend used to call it, a beta caro-tan. The real term is carotenemia and it is caused by eating lots of yellow or orange veggies that are high in carotene (vitamin A).


You are now an expert sitter who likes to lunge forward to grab things so that often you end up on your tummy, pushing yourself up with your arms and looking like... you are about to crawl. We think you have all the moves down for crawling, you just need to learn how to combine them, and perhaps increase some muscle strength. You have started sleeping on your tummy again (which freaks me out, but I'm getting used to it) and this is probably helping you strengthen your upper body for crawling. When you are trying to fall asleep or when you have just woken, I often find you doing push ups (the "easy" kind, knees down on the mattress) in your crib.

One of the most exciting developments in the last couple of weeks is that you understand certain words. In French. When you are in your Hop 'n Pop (so kindly lent to you by Miss Angel) I'll ask: "Benjamin, tu sautes?" (Benjamin, you jump?) and you will jump enthusiastically:


If I ask "Où est le minou?" or "Où est la minette?" (Where is the kitty? -- masculine and feminine forms) you will look at the cats. You'll also dance when asked to -- though your dancing looks a whole lot like your jumping. And when I ask you where the dragon is, you will look up at the dragon mobile.

The other day your papa asked you "Where's the dragon?" and you looked at the dragon! It was the first time he could tell that you understood English.

We've also started signing with you. So far we are doing "eat," "more," "milk," and "drink" -- and occasionally "jump" and "dragon" for obvious reasons. Garcia suggests starting with 3 signs, but our extra ones seem very relevant to your daily life. We don't expect you to sign back for another couple months.

Play is serious business. You love pulling things out of boxes or dumping your shoe box of Legos:

You also had a phase when you liked to put all your toys behind you -- you definitely understand object constancy now. Peek-a-boo is still your favorite game and you even hide yourself with a little blanket now. Of course, sometimes grabbing my hair or your papa's beard or chest hair come in at a close second. You pull with all your might and often give a delighted shriek. You also love pulling off my glasses and smile diabolically while I try to wrestle them out of your amazingly strong little fingers.

One of the things I've really enjoyed this month is watching you react to music. After breakfast we listen to a CD of French songs that our Tante Janine gave you. Recently, when the music starts (the first song is always "Sur le Pont d'Avignon") you have started to get excited. I usually sing along with the first few songs and we dance around.

Then I sing again when "Un Petit Navire" comes on. You now recognize that song and get a big smile when it starts. I remember my grandmother and mother singing that song to me and have a particularly clear memory of my grandmother saying the "Ja-ja-jamais" part. I have to admit that I feel a little twisted singing this song with you. It's about a little boy who has "ja-ja-jamais naviguer" -- who has never sailed before -- and who joins the crew of a ship. The ship runs out of food after 5 or 6 weeks and they draw straws to decide who will be... eaten. The little boy draws the short straw, but while his crew mates are trying to decide what sauce to cook him in, thousands of fish jump onto the ship, sacrificing themselves to save him. The cannibalism of the song scared me a little as a child. The lyrics on our CD are shorter than the ones on the website above and, interestingly enough, eliminate the child praying to Mary to save him. I remembered this song as being religious, but when I listened to our CD I thought I must have read more into the lyrics than what was explicit.

In the last week you have also begun to "sing" while we sing and dance in the morning -- though you don't seem to care what we are listening to and prefer to sing your own tune. And, of course, you enjoying playing the drum and the keyboards:


Well, the writing of this letter has gone on far too long, so I am going to stop now and post it. Thank you for such a fun month, mon petit chou.

Bisous,
maman