The Messy Meal Monster

Christian loves eating and gets very excited when he knows it's mealtime.

This is Christian before he has eaten—looking oh so sweet and innocent.

And this is Christian after he has eaten—looking like the messy meal monster he becomes when he feeds.

After one too many unscheduled laundry days resulting from meals like the one pictured above, Christian now knows he has to remove his shirt before eating.

He then waits (im)patiently while his food is being prepared; sometimes resorting to chewing on his fingers to tide him over.

As his meal preparation nears completion, he will sometimes drool in eager anticipation (this marks the start of his transformation phase into the messy meal monster).

With any luck, Proctor & Gamble's customer service department will soon send us on an all expense paid trip to Hawaii as a small token of their appreciation for all the Bounty paper towels we go through cleaning up the messy meal monster.

Peas Please

A few months ago Christian tried peas for the first time. At first he was not too sure about the flavor (not unlike the first time his sister tried peas).

He tried pulling off his bib to show he was done eating.

When that didn't work, he decided to start spitting them out.

However, after several bites he decided he liked peas after all.

So far, Christian is proving to be a less finicky eater than Ava. Hopefully that continues to be the case.

Firsts

Ava and Christian each experienced firsts recently. Christian's first was eating. He turned out to be a natural.

In fact, after just a few bites, he was holding onto Krista's hand trying to keep the rice cereal coming as fast as possible.

Ava's first was getting her hair cut and styled.

She was pretty excited at first, but soon realized that sitting still for several minutes while having your hair combed, yanked, cut, and dried isn't all that it's cracked up to be (although she loved driving the pink car).

She was, however, quite pleased with the final result. She chose the "princess pony" style, which apparently has nothing to do with a pony (or ponytail for that matter), but had the word princess in it, which instantly appealed to Ava.

Spaghetti O's and Z's

This is what happens when somebody skips nap time...

Spoons Are So Overrated

Ava's Birthday Party (2 of 2)

While we were in Pennsylvania visiting Larry's family, we celebrated Ava's birthday for the second time. The main event was letting her devour her own birthday cake. Although "devour" may not be the best word to use. "Picking at" would probably more accurately describe it. How dull. Then again, we suppose there's nothing wrong with having her be dainty and ladylike. After some prompting, however, she did eventually start to get a little messy. Here's a video of all the fun.

P.S. Here's what the cake looked like before it was given to Ava to "devour".

Cheerios

About a week ago we finally introduced Ava to finger foods for the first time. Most parents would have done this much sooner, but Krista (who borders on paranoia in regard to feeding Ava new things) had to hear it was okay from the pediatrician first.

So following Ava's nine-month checkup, we got some Gerber puffs (more or less Cheerios, only they disintegrate in your mouth within seconds... oh yeah, and they cost three times as much). Anyway, we put Ava in her highchair and dumped a few on her tray. At first she just stared at them, then she poked at them, and then she struggled as we tried to force-feed her one to demonstrate that they could be eaten. After a few minutes, she finally figured it out and we quickly retrieved the camcorder.

A few of our favorite moments:

1. The fact that half of cheerios end up in her lap (she's much better at getting them into her mouth now)
   
2. Her kicking her feet and flailing her arms in excitement
3. How she works at positioning each cheerio in between her thumb and index finger
   
4. When she drops the second-to-last cheerio and then examines her hands trying to determine where it went
   
5. Her trying to grab the last cheerio just out of her reach
   

We hope you enjoy watching (and re-watching) this as much as we do.

No Peas Please

Ava had peas for the first time this past weekend...

...need we say more?

Like a Birdy, Being Fed for the Very First Time

Ava has been eating solid foods now for the last few weeks. We started her on rice cereal. At first she wasn't quite sure what to do with it, getting more on her face than in her belly. However, by about the third time around she had it all figured out. She now opens her mouth like a perfect little bird when she sees the spoon approaching. In fact, the etymology for Ava is "bird-like," derived from aves, the Latin word for bird.

When we feed her she gets extremely excited. Her eyes get wide and her hands shake with anticipation as each spoon-full of baby food moves toward her gaping mouth.

Once she finishes, she is quite the happy little camper.

Now if we could just get her to feel the same way about sleeping as she does about eating. Here is a rare picture of her happy in her crib. She is looking intently at her mobile.