More. Food.

What a difference a week makes! We've been saying that "he's a new baby to learn every week" for a long time now, but secretly I thought the pace was slowing down. Wrong! The day before yesterday, we had to make an emergency run to the store for more baby rice cereal. I just wasn't prepared for the small box that we bought six weeks ago, back in the ancient history of four months old, to be empty. Karston was so slow to start eating (anything other than my milk or formula) that the rice cereal seemed endless. Then suddenly, BAM!, the end of the first box of rice cereal! Here we are, two days into the new box of cereal, and Karston's already eaten half of it. If you blinked, you missed his transition to food.

Yesterday he went on a nursing strike. He's only refused breast twice before. (He loves spending time with Daddy, and Daddy brought bottles. I didn't feel rejected because I think it's adorable that Karston loves his Daddy and wants to spend time with him.) We had a loud hungry morning yesterday before I decided that trying everything meant I should try a spoon as well. And Karston let me feed him with a spoon! I was so surprised, I barely knew what to do! I should have remembered that "he's a new baby to learn every week," but I thought I knew the feeding routine. Feeding him with a spoon takes longer, but he watched me raptly! I felt special to be allowed to feed him ... I'm sure this fairy dust will wear off with a few more goobers of rice and milk, but we enjoyed Spoon Time.

So today (keep up with us here folks, he's changing rapidly) we tried his second food, sweet potatoes! Daddy and I don't like sweet potatoes, but I selected that vegetable for a different reason. I went through all of the stage 1 foods at the store three days ago, a store that didn't have rice cereal when we knew we were LOW, precipitating our emergency run to re-stock the next day. I wanted a fruit (prunes), a vegetable (sweet potatoes), and a meat (turkey). After applesauce, my favorite, I picked out the other baby foods based on which ones had the most calories because Karston's in the 5th percentile for weight. And despite the recent crack I heard in response to that ("well, so are his parents" -- although we're normal-sized), I'll just feel better if I know he's not skinny because I'm starving him. Daddy has said before that he wished water had calories so he didn't have to eat food, so I think getting a high calorie density into my two boys (without ballooning up myself, and without cooking different meals for each of us) is important. As a side note on that, I got excited the first time I saw AquaCal bottled water. It's calcium-fortified water, but my first thought was that it was water with calories! Finally someone made water with calories for Kurtis! Alas, just calcium. Which is probably a good idea, and I'm probably the only person who (a) thought AquaCal meant water with calories, or at least (b) thought that was a good idea somehow. Karston says sweet potatoes are not rice cereal, and he makes funny faces about it.

I feel like he's all grown up now. He no longer nurses himself to sleep. In fact, he no longer nurses during the day when he can get fed food (not my milk or formula). He already gave up his bottle, and he thinks cups are fascinating. He's not co-ordinated enough for a sippy cup yet, but I know that transition will rush up on me, so I have two in stock, and one is currently a "toy" for him. And he gave up his pacifier. And he did all of that on his own! My mind boggles. I'm just here to hold him up so he can do his stompy dance, to feed him from a spoon, and to change those diapers.