Enter: The Spoon



It's probably a bigger step for us parents than it is for our baby, but we finally broke out the spoon. We say Josie's eating solid food now, but truth be told, it's all goop, familiar foods stirred or blended into mush. Until now, she's always been a baby made of nothing but her mama, but with the spoon comes a bit of Mother Earth for her rapidly growing body. Sure, she still smells like sweet milk, but her diapers are suddenly filling with green paste, and for the first time ever, they do not smell so sweet.

We set up the kitchen and readied ourselves for a long dance, planning to swing and tease the spoon past her lips, but after mixing the rice cereal, our plans were cut short. Mama moved the loaded spoon toward her lips and Josie popped her mouth open like a flightless chick and snapped the cereal into her mouth. She's been studying our spoon technique for weeks, and it seemed she had already made plans of her own. Clearly, she felt that variety in her diet was long overdue. She was right.

Yes, we'd been holding out on her. She is six months old, and a girl her age deserves to enjoy a piece of the toddler good life. It was hard for me to change it up too, because even if only symbolically, giving up her nutritional monopoly is the first step in handing her over to the world.

So we started with rice cereal, and she loved it. I mean, it took a little practice to line up her mouth with the spoon properly, and as she lunged to throw her mouth over the spoon, she'd frequently misfire and take a blob of goo on the cheek. But she got it. She smiled at us through a sloppy face we probably shouldn't love forever. The learning curve on the cleanup was a surprise to us. After all, by the time we finished, her face was caked with a sauce not too different from paper mache. Several ear-to-ear wipes were little help, and after conceding that a little scrubbing wouldn't do the trick, we needed a bath to cleanse her million-dollar smile.










Ashton giving it a try... (he was so disgusted)

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