Boob by mouth

At 4 and 3/4 months we have finally decided to start Aston on Solids, the main reason for this is that our boob by mouth only baby continues to fight the bottle and we have a fear that if we carry on with the exclusive breastfeeding for another six weeks, we'll also have a fight on our hands getting him to take food.

Our main resistance to starting solids before now was that we didn't want to beef him up but as he gets more active, grows longs and looks a little leaner it is clear that he needs more nurishment than I can give, especially in the afternoons. So we have an 8 week plan to move him to solids which involves a very watered down rice cereal and formula for the first week, slightly thicker the second week, introduction of a 2nd food feed the third week, then mixing with fruit and (using the savory version, with mashed vegies) the fourth week, then slowly fazing the rice cereal out in favour of real food between 4-8 weeks.

If anyone has any suggestions for a better plan let me know so I can ammend.

Anyway as you can see from the pics above, Aston was right into it and seems to enjoy the taste, although were not sure how much he eats. He also likes to take control of the spoon.
We suspect that, as he gets into eating solids that it's going to be very messy.

We leave for New York next week and Rob's laptop is handed back to his company on Tuesday so until we get to Sydney on March 1st this could be the last post for a while..........

I want to sleep on my front

While Aston sleep really well at night and we are reaping the benefits of the bath, feed, bed routine we implemented at 8 weeks because he goes down pretty quickley, during the day he's much harder to settle. The bedroom is a bit too light, which does'nt help and regardless of all efforts to the contary, we can't get him into the "preferred" routine of back to bed 2 hours after waking for 1.5 hours and repeat.

Instead we have a 20 - 30 minute catnap every 2 - 3 hours which makes for one very tired boy at the end of the day ... and it often takes over an hour to get the 20 min sleep out of him, as per the photo's above, but geeze he was happy to see me when I kept going in to turn him back around for his sleep. URGH is all I can say!

This is also the first time he's flipped himself onto his stomach in his sleep and I was keen to see what he did. After face planting the mattress for about 10 seconds he turned his head to the side and carried on sleeping ... it must be instinctive in babies not to suffocate themselves. However I'd like to watch this a few more times to gain confidence that he'll do it every time before I wake up at 4am and find him face down like this asleep.

Contemplating life, the universe, the made in china tag and stuff

How much can I get into my mouth !!!

Is this the end of the bouncy chair !!!

We fear the bouncy chair, which has been a fantastic and safe way of keeping Aston amused is coming close to its end of usage. Aston today managed to fling himself around today which such momentum while strapped in, that the whole chair nearly turned on his side. He's getting to big and to animated that he's likely to topple the whole chair over pretty soon...

I can nearly sit up by myself

Aston can hold himself up for about 30 seconds, although he has also started kicking out with his legs and then bounce forward.........