marydell | Hooray for Solid Food!

We decided to give Charlie his first taste of solid food for dinner tonight. He's recently begun watching us intently while we eat, and this weekend we were out at a steak-and-egger and he started sticking his tongue out and licking his chops when he got a whiff of Mike's omelet. It was pretty hilarious.

So we checked with the doc, read up on the process, and so now I have a little stash of rice cereal and gerber veggie slurry to start introducing him to over the next couple of weeks. Yes, I know that real mothers cook and puree their own vegetables, but I am upholding a proud family tradition of women who can't cook worth a damn.

Anyway, we sat him up on Mike's lap and I mixed up some rice cereal--"solid" is overstating it--and as soon as he got his tongue onto the stuff he broke out in a huge smile, and then proceeded to have no idea how the fuck to eat it. He still has the instinctive thing of pushing most of the food out of his mouth instead of swallowing it. Using my finger for a spoon worked a little better. Anyway he concentrated intently and managed to consume a total of about a quarter of a tablespoon. Nutritionally, it's pointless, but he LOVED it--he was just having a blast with the new sensation and taste, and later in the evening he was sticking his tongue out and touching it and generally indicating that a mouth is a cool thing.

Of the many amazing things about being a parent, one of the most amazing is that I get to shepherd a fellow human being through these absolutely primal experiences.