Happy New Year to us all!

It is so strange to me that it is a different YEAR from that whence my bahboo was born. As previously mentioned, I tend to believe she is the youngest person ever to drool gooeys on this earth, so any proof of the passing of time in her life is quite flabbergasting. (PS- She really likes to drool her gooeys.)

Speaking of drool and gooeyness and things that come out of her mouth, Annalise has started eating solids! And by solids I mean apple that's totally liquid. And by eating I mean spitting out and drooling gooeys.

The point is, I was going to wait longer to introduce any foods, but after extensive reading, learned that the risk of developing allergies because she starts eating now as opposed to at six months (in a month and a half) is nil since she is a breastfed baby, though if she were formula-fed it would make sense to wait. Said extensive research was prompted by the allure of the possibility that she might sleep longer at night if there was food in her stomach. Of course, all data points to the fact that it should make no difference and babies that eat solids don't sleep better. The fact that many moms insist otherwise though was enough to make me read every online article ever written regarding whether it was prudent that I could start feeding immediately and in fact would yesterday be okay?

I was very excited. I thought very hard about what food to start with. Rice cereal constipates and the added iron isn't absorbed as well as iron in meat, so scratch that. I wanted to start with meat but I want to puree my own and don't have the zillion-dollar blender necessary, so scratch that (For now. Til we become zillionaires.) Bananas would be an obvious choice except I hate them and their smell makes me puke. Avocados seem like the perfect food based on fatty content, iron, nutrients and I-can't-remember-what-all except I really wanted her to like the food to thus desire to guzzle it mightily thereby possibly extending sleep-age til the end of time. The best chance of that seems like it would have to be something sweet... which all led me to my final selection, First Food of Choice, the winner: APPLESAUCE!

We got out the Bumbo. We got out the video camera. We got out a spoonful of applesauce. Which turned out to be exactly one spoonful less two molecules too much.

The baby opened her mouth for the spoon, made some crazy and terrible faces, mushed the applesauce around with her tongue, dribbled it out, and generally looked alarmed and apprehensive. There was no swallowing and no real eating per se. But she kept opening her mouth for more so I kept putting more in, much to the delight of the napkin, if napkins had appetites.

If this applesauce had been the strongest sleeping pill ever invented, the amount consumed wouldn't have put an amoeba to sleep.

So in the end, a sleeping aid this solid food was not. But it was so cute to see her lick food around like such a big girl. And it made her smell appley.