Life, Love and Bunny Crackers: New update

So what's been going on with us? Santi is now 7.5 months old! Eating solids like a champ, and moving onto more solid, non-pureed food. He had toast yesterday and loves puffs and these little Gerber Yogurt Melts.

He's still sleeping through the night and has learned to self soothe himself, which means we no longer have to rock him to sleep and can instead put him down in bed, give him his "lovie" (a tiny blanket my mom made him) and he will roll onto his side and put himself to sleep. It's so nice for naps and for in the evening.

He's rolling everywhere! He now pretty much hates being on his back unless he puts himself there. If we put him on his back he does everything in his power to roll onto his tummy. Which means we're strapping him into his changing pad, and watching him like a hawk when he's on the bed. He's already rolled off the bed and the couch but thankfully wasn't hurt, just a little stunned.

Since he's rolling, we need to start getting serious about childproofing - we're tackling that this weekend. It will involve some furniture rearrangement, and putting away of some of our nicer things that we don't want little hands touching. We're also looking for a soft ottoman to use as a coffee table since the one we currently have is rectangle with some sharp corners. We also have a fireplace to deal with covering up (and it's got no cover for the actual fireplace spot, so it'll need a baby gate around the whole thing.) We weren't actually planning on being here when he became mobile so we didn't think too much about these things but now we have to tackle them.

He loves anything that moves - he has a little car that we can roll up and across the floor to him which he loves. But he gets so frustrated when he can't pick it up because even though it's a toy for kids at 6+ months old the designers didn't think about that when they were making it because it's too big for little hands to pick up! He also has a snail that plays music and is on wheels so he loves to move that around too.

He also loves anything musical. I recently got him a toy drum kit that he can bang on and has a bunch of other instruments that are stored inside (a tambourine, bells, xylophone, and rattle) and he loves it. I picked it up at a consignment store for $10 so I was happy that something so cheap can make him so happy.

He is getting ready for his 2nd plane ride next month. We'll be heading to Peru for 3 weeks during the holidays. We're excited and anxious about the travel. We went to San Diego last month for an event and brought Santi along and it was actually pretty easy to travel with him. But that flight was only 2 hours. The flight to Peru is 5 hours from here to Atlanta and then 7 hours from Atlanta to Lima. And he's into grabbing everything now. And he's also starting to arch his back and whole body if he's not happy with things. (We know we're in store for some full body drop-to-the-floor tantrums when he hits 2 or before!) So we're hoping he'll sleep at least for the longer flight, since it leaves around his bedtime and we arrive at about 1am. We have two seats alone on this flight and he's sitting on our lap. For the flight from Seattle to Atlanta we have booked the aisle and the window seat in hopes that someone won't book the middle seat and we can put Santi there during the flight if needed.

We also picked him up this:

It's a piece that goes on the tray and has all sorts of exciting things for a 9 month old to play with - crinkly, velcro balls, mirrors, zippers, a photo album, etc.

We're going to get some new toys for him to open during the flight too in order to keep him entertained.

Now, for some videos - I've been taking a lot of videos of him lately since he's doing so many new things.

Santi and the cereal puff:

Santi and the cereal puff from Kate Davila on Vimeo.