Mmm... s'mores

You can't necessarily tell by the look on G's face, but he very, very much liked his first campfire s'more experience...

"MY toys."

Here's the G-man last week listening with his toy stethoscope to the heart beat of his little-sibling-to-be... just moments after our midwives found it for the first time. Yahoo! Baby #2, here we come.

When we talked with him after our appointment about the fact that he would be a big brother, his first response was, "MY toys." Hm. I think he gets it pretty well for a 2-year-old!

We're thinking of picking up this t-shirt for Graham so he can say loud and proud that he's going to be a big brother this March. Think he'll dig it?

Gourmet baby

For the last few weeks, Graham has been intently watching us eat and grabbing for our food or utensils. I had hoped to wait until he was 6 months old to start feeding him solids (just for the sake of ease), but everything was telling me he was ready—now. So last week we started giving him rice cereal once a day.

Per my research (yeah, yeah, I'm nutty about my research...), babies don't need the nutrition from food until they're a year old. Right now it's more about exploration, getting used to tastes and textures other than mama's milk, and learning how to move food to the back of his mouth, which is different than using the sucking reflex. So the goal really isn't necessarily to get much food in—unless he really wants it—but to go ahead and let him play. Slobber it all over himself. Squish it in his hands. Hold the spoon. Fun!

On day one he lunged at the spoon and the dish of rice cereal, eagerly trying to put his mouth on it all and hold the spoon himself. It doesn't hurt that he tries to put everything in his mouth these days. He spit plenty of it back out, too. We were entertained.

A video of G-man's first feeding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDBu-ihY4OQ

By day 5 of rice cereal, I think he was having a doggone good time, though mostly with his new Bambu spoon.


We're supposed to introduce to foods one at a time, for four or five days each, to make sure he doesn't have any allergic reactions to them. Then we can move on to something else. Now that he has passed five days of the rice cereal test, it's time to move on to a vegetable. So mama just made her first home made batch of baby food: steamed and pureed organic sweet potatoes, which I'm freezing into ice cube trays to thaw and heat as needed.

I'm practically salivating with excitement about that beautiful orange-colored puree and all the beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin B6, iron and potassium about to hit that sweet boy's system! The food dork in me is coming out in an entirely new way. Let's just hope Graham inherits my passion for colorful, fresh foods one day...