Mikey (er Justine) Likes It!

We were spoiled, frankly. You see, our little angel was not like those “other” babies, who kept their parents up all night with their incessant crying, pooping and Finnish yodeling. No, Justine was a sleeper. All the way through the night, cat-like. It was miraculously, it was unexpected, it was entirely awesome. And then it stopped.

Why it stopped is some manner of discussion in the household. When these things change, folks end up rationalizing, and we were no exception. Some of the episodes happened right after her vaccinations, so we thought that might be the issue. Our house is drafty, perhaps causing her to wake periodically. She drools like a root canal patient, so maybe the pain jars her awake. The cats perch on her crib rail, staring down at her at night, giving her nightmares.

What we finally settled on, at least as a best guess, was that she simply was hungry. Hungrier for more than the dairy victuals streaming from my wife. Yes, we decided it was time to start Justine on food.

Now, I must admit that I am a bit in the dark when in comes to infant development. I understood, of course, that my little child had no teeth with which to chew her food, and so solids were out of the question. But I jumped ahead a bit, pureeing a Double Whopper and cramming it into a bottle. My wife pointed out that this was foolish because a) this is not at all nutritious for a five month old and b) there was no way that slurry was going to get out of the nipple as it was too thick. Her suggestion: rice cereal. And yes, I did think of Rice Krispies, and no apparently that is not right either.

In the pantheon of baby first, first “food” is definitely has a high chance for hilarious reaction shots, right up there with first “pie in the face” and first “realization that she’s a he in the Crying Game.” With this in mind, we set up a small webcast and invited our parents to tune it for the fun. We placed a curious Justine in her new height chair, strapped a bib on her, and prepared her food. With some trepidation and amidst constant flashes of my camera, Kim gingerly brought the first spoonful up to her mouth, leaning her head away should the reaction be projectile in nature.

All done And Justine slurped it down. So well in fact that we couldn’t keep up with how fast she wanted the cereal. (Later analysis by a panel of parenting experts would prove that we did not, as some alleged, feed her too quickly.) By the end, Justine was holding the spoon herself, licking the contents off like it was frosting left on a spatula. It was a mess to be sure, but there was no doubt that she was ready for cereal.