Cousins

One of the benefits of NOT being gainfully employed is the freedom to go with Jeff when he travels for work. I've passed up on trips to Lakeview and The Dalles (go figure) but when he had a trip planned to La Grande a few weeks ago, I jumped. Not only do Jeff's grandparents live there but as of late, so do Annie, David & Aden. For those of you who don't know, Annie is my first cousin and Aden is her sweet little guy who's 8 months older than Kieren. (Not to be left out of the fun, my mom, our Grandma and my brother Jeff came down too.)
Annie and I grew up together, playing and giggling... mostly giggling, so it's been fun to have little boys close in age. It seems like every time we get together, whether we're 13 or 30, there is at least one thing that will send Annie & I into fits of laughter... this time it was an impromptu photo shoot of Aden & Kieren at the park. Not only were their little personalities in full effect, it appeared that Kieren didn't want Aden to get up and go. He made attempts at keeping Aden there by grabbing a handful of his goldilocks and getting a death grip on his pant leg.

It obviously doesn't take much to get Annie & I laughing, especially when it comes to our boys.

New sounds

I'm guessing that eating solid starts the process of different tongue/mouth movements because soon after he starting eating with a spoon Kieren started some new sounds. It's been hard to capture on video but it's at the very beginning of this clip. (the "crying" at the end is definitely not new to us.) :)

1 tablespoon = 1 hour

We knew the transition would come. We were planning on waiting until about 6 months to start Kieren on some solid foods but when he started waking up every 4 hours again during the night we did a little reading. Most books suggested trying some solid foods. Now, for those of you out there that consult parenting (and especially sleep) books I'm sure you know that each new book will say the exact opposite of the previous book you've just read. It can be a bit confusing as new parents when even the experts don't agree. Both Jeff and I are numbers people (degrees in finance & math) and when things come up Jeff researches and I process. Unfortunately Kieren doesn't always follow our logic... if "a" and "b" then "c" approach and since the experts don't agree we often end up with the "guess and check" approach.

I like to sleep at night so I promptly hit the store for baby cereal & spoons. I wanted Jeff to experience this "first" in Kieren's life so I got everything ready and waited for him to get home from work. On with the bib and we were off... sort of. I know that the box of cereal that I bought said it was rice but I swear it turned into plaster of paris. I added a little more liquid and it went completely runny, a little more cereal and it seemed ok but only for a couple of minutes after which it went runny again. Once I finally got the texture right and a spoonful to Kieren's mouth he promptly grabbed the spoon and chewed on it for 5 minutes. He did manage to suck the food off first so I didn't fight it. We went on like this - spoon to mouth, chew on spoon, get bored, give spoon back, reconstitute cereal, spoon to mouth... for nearly an hour and he ingested less than a Tablespoon of food. Now fortunately those same books had prepared me for worse so I called it success! What they didn't warn me about was that no matter how runny the cereal is, it dries to a super hard finish. A washcloth seemed insufficient so it was off to the tub with my little munchkin. By the time I had Kieren bathed, booked, fed and in bed I was tired too. The payoff came and went as we passed midnight without him (or I) waking up... true success.

Over the last week or so Kieren seems to be taking to solids like a pro. He's getting better at keeping the food in the mouth, I'm getting better at mixing the cereal and it still takes us a long time to get through a feeding. It's exciting (and a little sad) as he graduates but more than anything I'm so happy to have a healthy, giggly little boy who sleeps.


I think over the next few weeks we'll start branching out into foods other than rice cereal but it may be good to keep on hand if I need to touch up the texture on the walls or mortar a few bricks in a pinch. :)