All I want for Christmas...

Well, Jake didn't get his two front teeth for Christmas, but now, two weeks later, he's got them! I can't believe our little boy has 4 teeth already. We did have a great Christmas though - it was so special to have our first Christmas and new year's eve as a family. Jake had a special Christmas jumper with a snowman on it and Christmas pyjamas. And a t-shirt saying 'My First Christmas'. And Christmas trousers. And a spare Christmas jumper, just in case. I think I just might have got a little over-excited about Jake's first Christmas...!

We spent Christmas Eve at my parents' house, as per usual, and Jake slept as we had a delicious meal. We decided to skip the presents this year - the pile of presents was growing so ridiculously large with each passing year and none of us fancied the present-buying stress. It was strangely liberating to have Christmas without presents! On Christmas morning we went to church and it was so nice to see all the babies from this year's church baby-boom, all dressed up for Christmas. In the afternoon both our families came over for dinner & drinks. Jake got a bit too much attention and got rather weepy from being over-stimulated. On Boxing Day we went to friends of ours where we got together with a large group of friends, as we do each year. The group is growing as the number of babies increases and it's nice to see how they're all developing. Jake was incredibly smiley and happy and stole the show!

New Year's Eve we had some friends over to our place and we had a BBQ. It was good fun and Jake slept through a large part of the fireworks. When he did wake up, it was in full panic-mode, understandably. Breastfeeding him calmed him down and he then let us have a lie-in till about 10 am, for which we were grateful.

Since 2008 has started, Jake has been moving full speed ahead. Literally. He isn't quite crawling yet, but he pulls himself along with his arms and pushes with his legs. This way, he gets everywhere he wants to be - and fast! He was already Speedy Gonzales in his walker, but he's almost as fast on his own steam. We scatter his toys around the room and he wriggles from one to the next, having a quick chew on each toy as he gets to it. At regular intervals he gets up onto his hands and knees and sways to and fro. He hasn't quite put the two movements together yet, but it's only a matter of time now.

The second 'big boy' thing is that he's now eating solids. Early January he turned 6 months and we gave him his first solid food in the form of a bowl of baby rice porridge. The first few spoonfuls were met with a scrunched up face, but he soon got into the swing of things and was trying to pull the spoon and bowl from my hands before long. Since then, we've had one bowl of porridge every evening and he seems to like it. We tried puréed carrots a few days ago but that only made him gag and, eventually, cry, so we'll try that again in a while. The rest of the time he's still breastfeeding and we both enjoy that, so we'll try to keep that up for as long as possible.

It's amazing how quickly it's all going. I had 3 weeks' holiday over Christmas and in those 3 weeks he got more teeth, started almost crawling and had his first solid food! He's also changed a lot in other ways. His fine motor skills are really developed now and he can sit in his chair for ages inspecting a toy or burp cloth or wooden spoon with great intensity. He can sit up without support for quite a long time now too, although when he gets distracted and wants to turn to see something, he'll topple over! He's a very happy, contented little boy and we just enjoy having him here so much.