Another month has flow by, and Lemon entered the last month of his first year this week. I really don't see how this is possible, but the calendar assures me that it's true. And it does seem that he's starting to look more and more like a little boy and less like a baby.
Over the weekend, we decided to go all out on introducing Lemon to new animals. Since we are raising Lemon in a big agricultural state, we want to be sure that he gets off to the right start in his cultural immersion program. On Saturday, we hit the Dane County Fair, which had an abundance of farm animals of all sizes, including a kiddie farm with baby animals that you could get good and close to:
goats,
piglets,
and chickens
(along with cows, horses, goats, llamas, alpacas, rabbits, ducks, pigs, and who knows what else). I tried not to worry about the particulates in the air or the germs from the animals and just have a good time. Lemon certainly enjoyed it. We posed for a few more pictures, and then had to head home because Lemon was so worn out by the experience that he needed an extra nap.
Then on Sunday we went to the zoo. We've gone several times before, but until this point, Lemon hasn't really been that interested in the animals, I think because he didn't identify them as living things and couldn't understand why we were so excited to stare at what looked like vast blank spaces. This time, though, he totally got it and was looking right at all the animals. By far the highlight, though, was his first ride on a carousel. I wasn't sure how he'd react but he was squeaking in delight the entire time and actually started to cry when the ride ended. Thus begins my long career of taking Lemon on rides while Papa Bear waits in the shade with the camera...
I'm sticking to my guns about trying to get Lemon to gain more weight without the benefits of Pediasure, so we're trying to expand
and vary his diet of solid foods even more. I think teaching a human
being to eat on his own is the single messiest undertaking of all time.
Even though Lemon has 6 teeth, he's still not really sure how to use
them and definitely still prefers pureed foods. We finally found one or
two things that he will pick up and stick in his mouth (or at least the
part of his head closest to his mouth), but there's a lot of room for
improvement. His manual dexterity isn't quite where it needs to be to
actually get his fingers out of the way so that the food can get from
his hand into his mouth. But, once he gets going with trying to feed
himself, it's hard to then get him to take something off the spoon. And then he gets avocado in his eyebrow. We're doing a lot of after dinner baths these days...
