Pike Family Happenings: Eating Baby Food and Christmas

Will turned six months old in December, so we decided it was time to start letting him try out other foods besides milk. For his first meal we gave him rice cereal, and except for his initial surprise at the different taste, he loved it. He did pretty well eating off the spoon, too. Since then we have tried some other foods like sweet potatoes, squash, bananas, apples, prunes, peas, peaches, and avocado. I think bananas are his favorite, but at this point it is hard to tell because he seems to just love food in general. It is fun to feed him, but mommy and daddy haven't been so excited about what all this new food does to Will's nice cloth diapers! Here are some still shots of the video we took of his first meal.

Christmas in our family was pretty busy this year. On Rob's side of the family, the Wheelers and Davis usually come into town several days before Christmas and then stay through New Year's Day, but this year the Wheelers weren't here quite as long since they were in the middle of moving to Minnesota and Dan was preparing to start his new position as pastor in January. Several days before Christmas we started hanging out with family in the evenings, sometimes for organized events and sometimes not. It is good to see everyone, but I usually prefer to spend time with people either one on one or just one or two couples at a time, so in Rob's family that means we need several social events to feel like we got to adequately connect with everyone.

Christmas Eve Rob, Will, and I went to the Christmas Eve service at our church and then drove around the city looking at Christmas lights with Andrew and Jessica. We saw some neat displays, but were a little late and some people had already turned off their lights for the night. On Christmas morning I made Frech Toast for breakfast and we opened gifts with Will. I was actually really surprised that he was able to open a couple of gifts without much help from us, but of course the focus was on the paper and bows, not the actual gift. I think Will played with the bow and cardboard backing to his pacifier package for most of the day, much to his delight. Since he is also beginning to scoot around the floor army crawl style, he loves going over by the Christmas tree. Here are some pictures of when I caught him pulling the ribbon off the tree.

In the afternoon we went over to Becky's new house and had the Pike Christmas. It was a good time with good food and tons of people. Funny how even in a bigger house it can still seem crowded with all the family. This year they split up the adults and children for the meal and for gift opening, which made it a little bit more managable.

On Sunday after Christmas we celebrated with my side of the family over at my brother Andy's house. My parents and other brother Ben drove up from Iowa, and it was good to see them. We had a good time with another great meal and watching the kids open gifts. Ava and Luke always love playing with Will, and it is so much fun to watch them interact together. Rob and I even played Settler of Catan with Sara, a game which we generally refuse to play, but it was really fun this time.