First Cheerio, First Kiss, First Fight

It's hard to imagine all of the firsts Elias must experience in a 24 hour period. Certainly more than the three listed above, although none as significant. Good God!

Yesterday morning, I decided to introduce the Cheerios, since the doctor had said it would be alright for him eat Cheerios and green beans. I thought Cheerios would be more fun than beans. so, I soaked two Cheerios in breast milk. The first one, I crushed into quarters and mashed with my fingers and let him eat the mashed mess off of my finger. He's seemed interested. The second, which was mushy from the milk, I gave to him mostly whole. He was alright at first, moving the Cheerio around in his mouth. Things went haywire during the swallow, with gagging and coughing. Just as I was about to give him the Heimlich, he pulled through. The result of that experiment is too young for Cheerios.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to a parenting group. Elias fell in love with two of the baby girls from his birth class. He crawled right up to one and tried to claw her face off (I intercepted just in time). And, when he went to greet Jenna, she grabbed hold of his head and gave him a big wet kiss right on the crown of his head. It was very sweet. After that, Elias griped and cried for the remainder of the group. I'm not sure, besides the kissing, how crazy he is for that group. I think he felt a little boxed in.

Today, we went to a play group in the morning. Elias really had a great time. He was crawling into the laps of the other mothers and standing up, playing with toys, and just basically, fitting right in like a little kid! He went up to another little boy who is 5-6 months older and proceded to greet him with a smack in the face. The little boy was startled and cried. Elias has a ways to go before mastering play yard etiquette, I guess. Actually, it wasn't a very hard smack, more like a pat, but it's not a very fun way to be greeted, I suspect.

The down side to the play group this morning is that Elias did not get a decent nap in today. He also had a pretty major spill on the wood floor while playing with Julia, which seemed to have knocked lose his goodmood-o-meter. He finally fell to sleep at around 3:30PM, only to wake up with the most depressing little cry about 30 minutes into his nap. :-( He's still sleeping now, and I am hopeful that he'll put the fall behind him.

Oh, yeah, two days ago, Elias started biting me! Yowza! Talk about shocking pain! He's not biting very often, but enough to provoke intervention, which he feels generally depressed about, too. When I "pop" him off my breast, he seems very hurt and sad. I hope he gets the picture that mommy is no chomping ground. I think it's been hard on both of us.