first food

AngelBaby is officially six months old (milestones post to come) and we celebrated tonight with her first food: rice cereal! (exciting, I know.) Since rice cereal has no substantial nutritional value, her weight gain is fine and she already sleeps well at night, we don't really need to give it to her beyond helping her learn how to eat. So I mixed it up and handed it off to Daddy. She grinned and cooed at him from her high chair and accepted the first spoonful willingly with a big smile (probably only in response to our excited animation). And then she seemed to pause, think about it and it was as if she said, "but what do I do with it?" Then the lump of cereal began to drool out of her mouth and Daddy patiently scooped it back in until she figured out how to swallow it. The next two bites were about the same. Then she went after the spoon, her curiosity requiring that she gets to touch and hold it but her lack of dexterity not allowing her to actually manipulate it properly. But that only lasted a minute as well and she seemed to decide she was no longer interested. She slowly accepted a few more tastes but her smile was gone and her face was solemn as if to say, "you're really going to make me eat that?" So we called that progress, dumped the rest of it into the sink and cuddled instead.