Applesauce

By Thomas Eric -- Dad

Today Gabriel had his first experience with applesauce. The idea behind introducing solids is to get the child comfortable with it. An old trick is to put it on the baby's hands and then wait for him to put his hands in his mouth. Gabriel was fine fingerpainting, but he wasn't tasting, so then I took my hand and put some applesauce on it. He thought chewing on my fingers was a great idea.... and went straight for my one clean finger. And then attempted to take off my wedding ring.

But later he did take some applesauce from the spoon. He seemed to like it and didn't do the "Hey what is this stuff?" look like he did with the rice cereal last week.

We've got another month of playing with food ahead of us, and then at six months' corrected age, we start looking at this from the perspective of making him work and get serious calories this way.

Also, today, it occurred to me that I when I called up friends and family, I no longer had to preface the call with "I am calling about nothing in particular; everything's fine." Back during our antepartum and NICU time, I had to do that to keep them from thinking that something really serious had just happened. Now I can just say, "Hi."