Meera's First Food!

We have a pretty amazing pediatrician. We credit her with medically saving Kyle and Owen. She did an incredible job working with us to get K & O on track and healthy when they first came home from Haiti. I mean, seriously incredible. Given her track record with us, we pretty much go with whatever she says/recommends/advises where our kids' health is concerned. But I was still very skeptical when, at our last well-baby visit with Meera, she told me that her prediction was that Meera would be "ready for rice cereal as soon as she turns four months old." I told Braydon that I wanted to wait until Meera was at least five months old, if not six months old -- despite the fact that we usually don't question Dr. Aleks. But I should have known! Dr. Aleks is always right on. A few days before Meera turned four months old she started showing obvious signs of interest in food. She started staring at me intently when I'd eat my lunch each day. I'd notice her staring at the boys when they'd eat snacks around her. And then she started reaching for our food when we'd be eating around her. A couple of days ago I was eating yogurt and she was grasping for it. I let her get a tiny smidge of a taste of it in her mouth (a speck of yogurt that I let her suck off my finger). She loved it and couldn't stop grabbing toward my spoon to try to get more into her mouth. She's also just recently started resisting sitting in her black Bjorn chair at our mealtimes. She'd fuss until Braydon and I would hold her on our lap... and then be totally content. She clearly just wanted to be right at the table with the rest of us. So, we set up one of the boys' old hook-on chairs (we never used high chairs for them when they were babies, just these chairs -- thanks to the awesome advice of our friend Robin). K & O are thrilled to have Meera right with us at the table now. And, I bought some rice cereal and we made big plans for last night to be "Meera's First Food!!!!" (this was a big huge deal for K & O). They couldn't wait for the grand event-- the feeding of "baby rice" to "Baby Meera." She was quite ambivalent about 'baby rice.' And she did not like K & O sticking the spoon into her mouth (I didn't get photos of that because I was too busy trouble-shooting to be photo-shooting). But it was a lot of fun for Braydon to try to feed her some. Tonight I tried my hand at it. Very little (if any) was actually swallowed on either night, but still... a huge step forward for our baby girl. Bittersweet... as all of these sorts of steps are.