Let sleeping bears lie

It would appear that Bear is indeed going through a growth spurt after all. Max found some info on growth spurts that said that a baby's body is programmed to wake up every hour to eat, so that the momma's body produces more milk during this time. Now, I'm not breastfeeding, but apparently Bear's body does not know that. Also, I noticed that his belly looked noticeably bigger when I was giving him a bath last night. The article Max found said that a baby will store up calories before the growth starts and then will sleep a whole lot while growing. I think we have entered the sleeping a whole lot stage now!! Bear went to bed at 9:30pm last night and did his typical wake up to eat deal every 3-4 hours, but he sure didn't wake up at 4am!! Yay! Instead, he woke up at 7am and ate and went back to sleep and is still sleeping at 9am! Normally, he starts a nap at 9 anyhow, so I'm just letting the tired little guy sleep. He's obviously wiped out.

Today's the first day in a while that I think Bear and I are just going to stay home. Over the past two weeks, we've been to visit my mom, my dad and his wife came here to visit, we've been to a meeting, to the store, to the park, etc. The only task I have to accomplish today is to figure out what food Bear should try next and how I should make it. Doesn't sound too difficult, but there are TONS of websites and thoughts on this topic to confuse me. According to most of them, Bear shouldn't even eat solid food yet, but the pediatrician said we could try some rice cereal at 2 months, so we did. The reasons that we can find for waiting until at least 4 months to feed a baby solids have to do with allergies and with the reflex that makes them spit everything out and/or gag on anything not liquid. I just fed him a tiny bit of the cereal at first and he seemed to have no problems, so we moved on to sweet potatoes this week. He's done great with these, too, so I need to figure out what to fix him next. We don't have many fresh veggies in the house, at least not ones that I'd opt to feed a baby, so I may end up having to go to the store tomorrow. I think all we have that's fresh is broccoli and Bear (from birth) has had enough gas to blow us all up, so I don't think he'll be trying anything cruciferous for a while yet. I remember when one of my friends fed her 8 month old some lentils. Can you say BLOWOUT? Eww.

Here's something interesting...my MIL sent Max's baby book to us and we were looking through it the other night and found a feeding chart for a newborn that started them eating cereal at 1 month and had moved on to meat by 3 or 4 months. It's amazing what changes in 30 years, isn't it? I just can't believe that the chart is so wrong, though. I mean, if Bear appears to be healthy and thriving from what we're feeding him, what's the big deal? I would worry if his digestion seemed to change after we started feeding him solids, but the majority of his calories and nutrition still comes from formula and will continue to for a good while. I suppose I am just worrying a lot about a minor thing, considering what a short time period of Bear's life this is. Is it really going to matter when he's 15 that he ate sweet potatoes a month before the books said he was supposed to? Doubtful.

Here's Bear and his friend Julia (and some mean geese) at Bear's first park visit yesterday: