Andi’s exciting life.

Today was my first official Mother’s Day as a real mom (not counting
last year when I was mom to a fetus). It didn’t really feel all that
different than any other day, but it did make me reflect on how lucky
and happy I am to have Falco. Matt made the day special with flowers
and a cake and dinner, and we went to lunch with our friends from our
childbirth class and their baby girl, who is nine days older than
Falco. To be honest, Falco had a hard day today and wasn’t that easy
at lunch and struggled with naps, but that’s OK. He’s such a good
baby that he is entitled to have a bad day now and then. He can’t
help it that he chose Mother’s Day to be a little grumpy here and there.

The real fun of the weekend was that we started Falco on solid foods
on Saturday! Let me qualify that statement by saying that, one, it
was really a semisolid gruel, and two, he didn’t actually eat much of
any of it. Saturday morning we sat him in his big boy Tripp Trapp chair
and took the plunge with feeding him rice cereal made with formula.
He didn’t quite know what to think, but he didn’t hate it, which was
about as good as we could hope for. Most of it just oozed out of his
mouth onto his bib, but he did swallow some every now and then. We
will start offering him cereal once a day now, and when he starts to
get the hang of actually eating it we’ll start adding a new vegetable
or fruit to his diet once a week.

Another big advancement Falco has made is that he switched completely
from bottles to sippy cups this weekend. He had started spitting up
a lot, so we switched him to a thickened formula to help with that.
He likes the new formula and it does help with the spitting up
situation, but it was clogging the bottle nipples. I tried feeding
him with a sippy cup, and he did really well with it. We decided to just
drop the bottles entirely, and it’s going really well so far.

He is rolling over like crazy now! He rolled for the first time on
April 9th, but then he didn’t quite get the hang of it again until
this past week. Now he rolls over and sleeps on his stomach
sometimes, and he almost immediately rolls over to his tummy when we
put him on the floor to play. He can’t roll himself back over, so he
gets a little frustrated with that, but I bet he’ll learn how to do
it soon.

We did it. We cut off Falco’s mullet. He was born with a mohawk and
ducktail, and that ducktail has grown into a mullet over the past
five months. We finally decided that it was too long and scraggly in
the back, so we gave him his first haircut today. It’s definitely
not a very stylish do, but at least he looks less like a hippy from
behind.

Before.

After.

April photos are up (link to the right), and there are some cute
ones. Falco is getting so big and turning into such a character.
I’m changing the format for Falco’s journal and will also get his new
monthly photo up by the end of the weekend. Enjoy!

As soon as Falco was born, I started referring to myself in the third person when I talked to him, such as “Mommy is going to change your diaper” or “Mommy loves you.” I wasn’t sure why I did this and thought it sounded ridiculous. Then, I actually read somewhere when he was a couple of weeks old that this is good because babies don’t really understand pronouns, so I just stuck with it instead of trying to break the habit. What I have noticed though is that it’s hard to turn off. Just now I put him to bed and then thought in my head, “Mommy needs to go to the bathroom and do some dishes.” Even in my own thoughts I am now Mommy instead of Andi, but that’s OK by me.