Yum, puffed vegetable things and pureed turkey. Is this like Thanksgiving?

We got the go-ahead at Punkinhead's 9-month check-up to give her more solid foods. She'd been given rice cereal and pureed vegies & fruits, but her doc said she was good to go on pureed meats, Cheerios, those dissolving puffed vegies & fruits and we can also do oatmeal and barley cereals.

Me being me, I set up color-coded notecards (oh, I love me some notecards) that have a meal time and meal "receipe" for each of her feedings.

Mornings: She still gets a formula-only feeding but I upped her to 10 oz. from 8 oz. She definately is more settled after her morning nap now. She'll play happily instead of screaming immediately for me to feed her right that second.

Mid-morning: She does a rice cereal, fruit serving with a follow-up bottle. I'm going to start trying the oatmeal cereal at this feeding as well.

Mid-afternon: I do the meat and a vegie serving along with rice cereal here. She gets a follow-up bottle too. Once I know for sure that she's not allergic to oatmeal, I'll change the rice cereal here to barley cereal.

Evening: Punkinhead gets rice cereal and a fruit & vegie serving along with, you guessed it, a follow-up bottle.

She gets some puffs or Cheerios to play around with on her tray at the 3 solids feedings. It helps her practice her pincer moves, but she really doesn't get any nutrition from it.

We all really love the whole process now - can't ya tell?

Nine months down, only 17 and 1/2 years until she leaves for college.

Times a flyin' by. HotMommy and Buzzkill are proud to report that at Punkinhead's 9-month check-up she weighed 18 lbs 10.5 oz (50th percentile), is 28 inches long (70th percentile), has a head 17.5 inches in circumfrence (60th percentile), and didn't have to get ANY shots!

With all the shots she gets between her vaccines, Synagis RSV, and flu shots, when I lay her down on the paper in the exam rooms, she screams because she anticipates a poking. So, it was nice to get a break.

Buzzkill is abso-blanking-lutely going to her 1-year appointment so I don't have to go through what I'm told is the hardest check-up until her 4-year check-up. He hasn't had to go to any doctory things since her appointment the week after she came home from the hospital. And I get bonus points for having to take her to all the eye doctor appointments where they used that horrible little tool to hold her eye open.

We are going to have to bring in a physical therapist since she isn't sitting up on her own yet, but all in all, we had a really good report from her ped!