You can't smell the soup when your head is in the pot

What the hell's going on here? I thought we had a pretty good system going on!

Come on daddy, let me try!

Warning: this is a post with lots of mention of bodily fluids. The squeemish or TMI-sensitive reader should wait for the next installment!!!

Regular readers of this blog have pointed out that it has been a long time since my last post. Actually, it has felt like a lot longer than 2 weeks to me. Micah kindly shared his cold with his mommy and daddy, and ours took a sneezy, snotty form rather than the chest cold that Micah had. None of us slept a full night through for about a week, and then, just as the cold was beginning to subside, I had a muscle spasm in my back and was in unable-to-sleep pain for a week. No, I didn't hurt it doing anything dramatic; the doctor suspected that all the sneezing and carrying of a 17-pound baby may have primed me for it. Now I'm better, but Micah seems to have some sort of "eye cold" with goopy eyes. (Is there such a thing as an eye cold? Adam keeps using that term. It isn't pinkeye, just goop.)

He's having a hard time with his late afternoon nap at daycare, so comes home cranky and sometimes too cranky to eat. We've been getting him to bed a bit earlier, but he has been waking up at odd hours of the early morning lately -- not sure if it is hunger, getting used to sleeping without being swaddled, or the beginning of teething. We have a lot to discuss with the doctor at his 6-month visit later this week.

Nearing the 6-month point has led us to the introduction of solid foods. We started about 2 weeks ago with avocado (so-so), then moved to sweet potato (much more popular), tried peas (the consistency of my first batch wasn't good; I've reformatted and we'll try again), and rice cereal yesterday morning. Oh me oh my did we have an explosion of bodily fluids. He was very unhappy with the rice cereal. It is pretty tasteless, and a less smooth consistency than his first foods. Trying to feed him despite his protests, I caused a gag reflex that brought up about 3 ounces of formula and watery eyes. Then we discovered that he was probably fussy because he was sitting in a hugely messy, "up the back" diaper. Oh my. Today we tried the rice cereal again but mixed it with some sweet potato. Still not very interested, but I think some of it went in his mouth as opposed to the bib. I'm defrosting a bottle of the breast milk that we purchased from the milk bank and I'm going to try mixing that with the rice cereal tonight, on the theory that it is a bit sweeter than formula. If this third attempt at rice cereal doesn't work (note from later on: a total failure this time, no way, no how, no thank you ma'am), think we'll move on to barley or oats, carrots, and then bananas.

I don't know how we didn't connnect this, but he developed a rash on his chest a few days ago, and I suddenly today wondered if it was related to the sweet potato. Solid food seems fraught with so many complexities and differing opinions. What are allergens, what are chocking hazards, what texture is appropriate for what age. The advice available in books seems contradictory and very culturally based (for example, no mention of any seasonings or spices, which we feel are important so that we don't have a bland-food baby; I'm sure they must introduce seasonings in other cultures to babies) It feels frustratingly slow to only be able to introduce one new food every 4 days -- he'll be in college before we've introduced a healthy range of foods.

In other baby-related developments, we're shopping for a new Micah-mobile, which is also a big project (Note to self: 6 hours of car shopping with a baby are 5 too many). We really need 2 new cars because Adam is driving a 10 year old car with 185,000 miles and I'm driving a 15 year old car with 115,000 miles, but we can only afford to do one right now, so it will have to be an all-purpose, gas-guzzling, SUV that can take us into the mountains for camping and winter fun. A fun, fuel-efficient city car for Mommy will have to wait another year or so.....

I leave you with two "aw sweet" photos from last week as a reward for making it through all that icky stuff!

Shabbat dinner with mommy's homemade challah. Wait 'til Micah can eat that!

Couldn't resist one last bath picture. If only he didn't insist on looking at his toes, the water level wouldn't be quite so high!