Food, tooth, and fun

As her mom, I must have found my fingers in Marian's mouth about a thousand times over the course of her life; it's her favorite chew toy. Today, I found my finger in Marian's mouth and in turn found a tooth in there as well! She weathered its emergence remarkably well; looking back I feel like she's been sucking her fingers slightly more and the occasional random late night fuss takes on a different light now, but nothing so noticeable that we knew with certainty what was going on at the time. When it becomes more noticeable than a tiny white speck on her lower gums, we'll pass a photo along.
Marian has also started on the long path toward solid foods. She took to rice cereal (about the consistency of porridge or cream of wheat, depending on how much formula we add to it) like...well...white on rice. She mastered Swallowing and Spoon Handling 101 and has quickly moved on to the elective A World Full of Flavors. So far she has yet to reject anything but prune juice, which we diluted with water and attempted to give to her to help keep her from getting constipated; fortunately, given her dislike of it, constipation hasn't been a problem. So we moved on to bananas, which she loved, but were a little too much for her young system initially (we'll try again in a bit); and then avocado, which she loves mushed up with some formula; then we used Earth's Best organic first foods, and she has tried and liked sweet potato, pear, and apple. We let her get used to each one individually over the course of 3-4 days which also allows us to tell if she has any intolerance or allergies to them, and then we move on to something new. She continues to get rice cereal twice a day along with bottle feedings 4-5 times a day.











She has become more and more fun. Her laughter is more frequent, her smiles more charming, her energy more infectious. She still hasn't mastered crawling but her hand eye coordination is sky-rocketing and her determination to move, move, move, continues.
A few other faculty here have babies and we can't get over how sleepy and still they seem compared to our little Tigger, who is determined to bounce, grab, taste, wriggle, and explore no matter what! But the wonderful thing about Tiggers...







...is that Tiggers are wonderful things.








I kid you not!