Month 8 (02/19/2010-03/18/2010)

The biggest news of this month was Daniel finally getting his first teeth. This went comparatively smoothly - we didn't really notice him getting any more cranky than usual.

First glimpses of Daniel's teeth on Feb 24th (left) and Feb 28th (right)...

... and getting bigger already on March 5th (left) and March 11th (right).

Unfortunately, having teeth still didn't quite warm him up to solid food. Our patient attempts to offer him all kinds of different flavors of baby food were mostly "rewarded" by a huge mess. We even started trying "not-quite baby food" as well, i.e. salted things, big chunks of bread - even chocolate. The results were rather ambivalent, though...

Also in other respects, Daniel has developed his own ideas of what is appropriate for his age and what isn't. Whereas most kids around his age probably start getting ready to crawl, he has discovered that it is much more interesting to stand up and walk... Of course he's not exactly able to do that quite yet, but he still wants it, and wants it badly: He demands vigorously to be helped up from lying around, and once we do help him, he stretches himself in such a way that he just has to end up standing rather than sitting. And if we dare to force him to sit after all, he shows us very clearly that he is VERY unhappy... ;-) If we put him belly-down, he gets even angrier - only rarely, when he's in a very good mood, he'll take that at all, and then he'll do anything else but trying to crawl...

He's been also getting more interested in all kinds of toys around him. On the top of his list: cables and the CD-player. He still likes paper, has fun dressing as a grown-up, and occasionally even gets to play with "real" kid's toys, like a ball, a book, or the new play mats that we ordered so that we could leave him sitting on the ground by himself without constantly worrying about him hitting his head on the hard ground whenever he topples over...

Of course, he still loves water, too. As usual, he has been enjoying his baths with Mom and Dad quite a bit. But we also took him to a public swimming pool once - a short but nice break in our routine.

Aside from that, we have taken it easy on trips this month. We did spend an evening in Cologne, taking a walk around the area of the cathedral, and we went for a walk in our neighborhood. But in both cases it was so freezing cold that we didn't last for long... For the rest of the time, we had fun at home - laughing, hugging, playing, "fighting", and recovering from it all...