Seasoned Pros

It is true what they say. The first one is the hardest. As a parent every little thing they do is a learning experience for both the parent and the child. The first time your kid is sick certainly feels different than the first time your third child is sick. It is certainly harder to remember Sophie's first time crawling. Sure it was special but it was almost a been-there-done-that sort of moment.

Jonah started rolling over from his back to his belly this weekend. It was mostly anti-climactic. Yes it was adorable; Genevieve was also really cute encouraging him on with cheers but when it was done he was still just on his belly. Now I know what you're thinking: he's just four months old. Sure he's four months old but with Monkey-See and Monkey-Do swinging from the chandeliers it is hard to get excited for these milestones no matter how monumental. Perhaps I'm jaded but he better start doing some way cooler tricks soon.

However, it isn't just me. For Genevieve's first hair cut
Carrie took her to a special salon. She paid what I would consider to be an exorbitant amount for any haircut that doesn't come with a massage. Though she did receive a baby's-first-haircut certificate and a lock of hair in a ziplock bag.

Sophie's first haircut went a little differently. Here is how it was related to me. "Sophie, If you put your hair in your mouth one more time I'm going to cut it off," said Carrie sternly. With a naughty look, Sophie slowly put her hair into her mouth and looked defiantly at Carrie. Carrie got the scissors off the shelf and proceeded to shorten Sophie's hair a bit. Yeah, the price was right but what about the special childhood memories? What about the certificate? Oh wait...the internet can handle that. I hope she at least saved a lock of hair.

Carrie mentioned the other day that Jonah seemed really interested in watching her eat. He would intently follow the fork from the plate to her mouth. I suggested perhaps we should start him on solids. The answer was a firm: No. He is only four months old, I was reminded. O.K. Whatever. She's the boss. Two days later we are eating in a restaurant with the kids. Carrie looks to me and says, "I think he is ready for solid foods." "Great," I reply, "we can try giving him cream-of-wheat in the morning." "Oh, too late, I already gave him some knish." *sigh* I guess there won't be any carefully photographed first food experiences.

Now that she'd already ruined him by giving him a knish we went a little overboard. I let him taste a banana I was eating. He gummed it for a while before he got bored but he really liked it. I let him drool on a corn chip though I imagine he was just licking off the salt. I also let him drink some seltzer which he thought was awesome. Oh, and we gave him some cream-of-wheat. He liked that too. We did take some pictures of that. Carrie will post those later this week.

After our experiences with the first two we are going to follow a more traditional/latest research approach to solid food. We're going to give him a wide variety of food pretty quickly rather than only one new food every three days. Neither of us has a history of allergies and G and S didn't either. Once we've covered most of our basics we plan on using the immersion blender to turn whatever we are eating into something he can eat.