15 lbs, 4 oz

That's how big I "grew" Katie solely from my own body.  That's right - my newborn baby girl has started solids.  We started her about a week ago on rice cereal, and she LOVES it!  She knew what to do right away.  Ben gave her the first bite, and she went right after it!

As with Benjamin, beginning Katie on solids is both exciting - to be entering the next stage of babyhood with her - and also sad, a marking of the end where I provide her with 100% of her nourishment.  I love looking at all that baby chub and knowing that she got it all from me!  That first I grew her within in my body, and then after she was born and I had to share her with the rest of the world, that still only I had something that she needed.  And that my body was able to grow a healthy 15 lb, 4 oz baby.

But now, it's time for her to take that next first step in independence - and allow the rest of the world to nourish her little body.  And it also marks the initial stages of weaning.  Which, actually, is sort of nice --- as since I am not back at work, we do not regularly give her bottles, and at this point, I'm not even sure if she would take one.  But a couple of days ago, I took Ben to a friend's house to go swimming and could leave Katie at home while she napped, because I knew Mark could feed her a bowl of rice cereal when she woke up.  And that was, admittedly, sort of freeing.

So here are a couple of pictures of Katie getting her first bowl of rice cereal!  We offered the honor to Benjamin, who was quite excited about it - and actually has looked forward to feeding her the cereal every day since!  It's a wonderful activity for Ben and Katie to do together.  We have challenges with Ben's "enthusiasm" for touching his sister a bit too energetically, so all of their interactions have to be carefully monitored (no, Benjamin, it's not okay to sit on your sister or rub your feet on her face), but he really "gets" the feeding her process.  I explained to put some on the end of the spoon, wait for her to open her mouth, and then pull the spoon back out.  And he totally gets it!  He's gentle and attentive and really does a good job!  Our only challenge is that he wants to wipe her mouth after EVERY bite, which she doesn't really like, so we compromised that she gets a few bites before getting her mouth wiped.

Okay, that felt really good to finally write a blog post --- and it didn't even take that long!  Man, I really need to do this more often - it just feels hard to find the time to actually sit down and do it.  Hopefully I'll blog soon about a few other topics I've wanted to capture: Mark and my 10-year anniversary (wow!), and our progress on our exterior projects and my determination to make a few changes in our lives (both of which are going well!).  So stay tuned...