Yet more food and some less than pleasant experiences

He's been doing pretty well with all the mush we've been giving him.
Mashed swede and potato took a few bites to get used to, but has generally gone down well since. I have also tried mashed sweet potato and carrot, which he absolutely loved. He was reaching out for the spoon and didn't waste any by spilling it down his bib. We've also tried a few other things, namely free samples sent by various companies that I joined the loyalty clubs for. It's all been variations on a theme, tending to be varieties of flavoured baby rice, but he's liked them all. Andy thinks they all smell horrible.
Today we had our first full on food refusal. I have previously been told that it's a good idea to do small 'courses' for baby, to introduce new flavours. Today we started with the now standard mashed swede and potato and I followed it up with a small amount of creamy yoghurt with a single raspberry squashed into it. It might have been that he was just too tired, not having had a very good nap or he might have been full from the swede, but he really wasn't keen. The few mouthfuls that actually made it in were greeted with some very funny faces and in the end the mouth was clamped shut and Joseph started throwing a paddy.
It wasn't wasted, I'm not going to pass up some nice yoghurt and fresh raspberry! Perhaps it's too strong a flavour, but I'm not giving up on the idea. Later in the week we will try a little yoghurt with banana or strawberry.
He had his first blood test yesterday. It's all part of this clinical trial I have mentioned before and the part I have been least looking forward to. I had to put analgesic cream on both hands and in the crook of both elbows at least an hour before the appointment, which was actually quite hard. The cream had to be held in place by clear plasters and they leaked quite a bit. I ended up putting him down for his nap in a long sleeved t-shirt and socks over his hands. He had quite a lot of dummy use that morning, to stop him chewing on the socks!
In the end he took after me and they had a lot of trouble getting blood. He wasn't in any pain, the cream had done it's job, he just didn't like being held still for so long. Babies of his age have small veins hidden under a nice layer of puppy fat, so simply finding one was tough and when they did it didn't want to give up much. They got just enough to run the basic test to check his response to the vaccination, but more would have been useful. In the end it became clear that Josephs veins were not playing ball and rather than distress him any more they called it a day.
Andy bought Joseph a present for being a brave little boy, a nice big rug with a brightly printed town plan on it, ideal for when he starts playing with cars and quite useful now to sit him on when feeding as it's wipe clean. Joseph does seem to like rolling about on it, he managed to go from his back to his front, but looked a little startled at arriving there!