Happy 7th Monthday Leo!

New Pictures: Leo's 29th Week

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Not a lot of pictures this week, as Tata was away on Saturday and most of Sunday, but we'll make up for that next week :) In the meantime enjoy pictures of our little guy figuring out his fascinating new toy from Wujek (Uncle) Samek, playing with Tata's hair or sliding backwards under the coffee table.

One change that's been happening is that Leo is really starting to pay attention to the books that we read to him. This means that chewing on it is not the only way a book can be enjoyed :) As you can see, each one of us reads to him in our mother tongue, and so Leo learns all about how "Emil je nestao" (Emil the duck goes missing) or about "Koncert Wojskiego" (Wojski's concert from the Polish epic poem "Pan Tadeusz"). Between these two and Cheryl speaking to him in English Leo is (hopefully) well on his way towards being trilingual.

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Leo loves playing with... tags :)

When you have a baby you should be prepared for weird and surprising behavior. Some is harmless, like making funny noises, other not so much, when for example your baby loves eating soap. Leo has surprisingly few such hangups so far, but one of the harmless ones is that whenever he gets a new toy the first thing he looks for is the... tag! And not only on toys - clothes, bibs, pillows, everything is fine as long as it has a black-and-white tag on it!

The other day Tea wanted to see what temperature we need to wash Leo's lion security blanket it, but could not figure it out because Leo had sucked out all the ink from the tag! I guess just like some babies who love playing in boxes rather than the things inside of them, at least Leo's weird habit is cheap to maintain :)

New videos: Leo goes to the pool!

With only some 2-week delay I've finally gotten around to putting together videos from when we took Leo to the Bretton Woods Country Club on an invitation from Tea's colleague, Rita. After a rather lukewarm reaction to the Adriatic Sea we were not sure whether the little guy would like the water outside of his bathtub, but as it turned out we needn't have worried :)

Leo practicing his french "r"

Due to technical delays the video did not work when originally posted, hopefully it works great now!

New Pictures: Leo's 28th Week

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This week Leo was still trying to get on his all fours, so we tried some of the old-fashioned methods of holding him up with a towel and having him "crawl around". Unfortunately, Leo would have nothing of it and was much more comfortable just lying down :) I guess some babies just prefer to do things in their own rhythm, and sure enough Leo is now on all fours, trying hard to figure out how to crawl forward (though, as you've seen from the videos, the result is usually that he ends up crawling backwards!)

This was also the week of the hurricane, which luckily passed without any damage and any major disruptions - Leo did not even wake up! The next day we met up with our friends Amit and Kajal for a Sunday afternoon drink, but we underestimated just how hot the day was now that the winds have cleared all the clouds away! In the end no amount of beer could keep us cool, and Leo spent most of the time huddled in the shade wearing nothing but his underwear, as keeping him in the sun would have turned him into a boiled shrimp! :)

It was also a week of visits, as we had our neighbors Kirstin and Vince over with their 4 and a half month-old son Jack over for brunch. The little ones had a good time on our new baby playmat as you can see! Then, on Monday Samek unexpectedly came for a visit to see Leo for the first time, and the little guy immediately warmed to him! Must be the kindred half-Polish blood :) Samek also got Leo a great new toy, which (once we finally got around to assembling) the little guy loves!

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New Video: Leo under coffee table

With Leo scooting backwards across the floor with the speed of a river crab on Red Bull, sometimes you look away for just half a minute and the little guy has already moved a meter back. And just like a car stuck in reverse, once he was up against the wall Leo ran out of options :)

New Video: Cheryl feeding solids to Leo and Violet

Now that both babies are eating solids we were wandering how Cheryl would manage to feed both of them. Well, on Friday I got to witness baby lunch chez Trumbic-Wozniak, and it makes for fun viewing :)

Leo's new solids diet

It's been a couple of weeks since we started introducing solids to Leo's diet and so far we've been making good progress. These days the little guy eats solids three times a day: once for breakfast ~7:30am (that's Tata's job), later for lunch (Cheryl) and in the evening before going to sleep (usually Tea). So far he's been eating:

1. "Stage 1"mushed foods from jars - we started with vegetables only so that he does not get used to solid foods being sweet (which babies can with fruit); also, we introduced them one-by-one to see if he's allergic to anything (he's not)
2. Baby yoghurt
3. Mama's milk mixed in with rice cereal

From veggies he really likes peas (apparently unusual for babies), squash and carrots, but he does not like sweet potato (maybe, being a good half-polish boy, he wants some butter and dill with his potatoes :). Next stage: avocado, fruit and, if we're adventurous, jars with mixed-in meats!

Big Boy Bathtime

Now that Leo has learned how to sit up we thought we might put him upright in the bathtub, rather than in the usual reclining position. As you can see, he rather liked it :)