First Blog For Harrod Family

Well, since it seems like everybody we know is starting a blog, we didn't want to get left out in the cold. So we are starting our very own Harrod Family Blog and hopefully it works out for us and I don't screw it up too much.

The main reason behind our blog is to let our friends and family get regular updates on the life of Zachary. Zachary will be 8 months old on November 22nd. Though he will be 8 months old, Zachary was born two months premature and is somewhat small for his age. At birth he was only 3 pounds 12 ounces and 16 1/2 inches long. He has been growing at a nice steady clip until he reached the 6 1/2 month mark at the beginning of October. At that point, Zachary was roughly 13 pounds 7 ounces. We then switched him from the Neosure Similac formula for premature babies ( has extra calories to help him grow) to the regular Advanced Similac formula.

Unfortunately, Zachary then came down with a few bad colds and a really bad teething period that seemed to last almost five days. By the end of November, Zachary had only gained an additional 9 ounces and was now 14 pounds. He is healthy, but just a little underweight. He also just came down with a really bad double ear infection and eye infection to go along with his lovely cold (runny nose, cough, etc). He is just about over both of those and has a follow up appointment on Wednesday with his pediatrician. We decided to put Zachary back on his extra calorie Neosure formula in order to try to get him to gain some more weight.

We also started introducing some food to Zachary as well. We started off with the rice cereal which he seemed to think was to boring as he did not take very well to it. We then introduced some banana baby food which he enjoyed much more. We followed that up with some squash and he took to that ok. We then tried out the oatmeal and he enjoyed that much better. Now, we have moved to some prunes. So far he appears to be doing pretty well with that, though the jury is still out as it has only been two nights now.

Attached are some photos of Zachary's first feeding when we introduced him to food. I know deep inside he is dying for a steak though!