Firsts!

Last week was an eventful one. First of all, remember how Lea rolled from back to front for the first time at 3 months? Yeah, she didn't do it again for a very long time. Then last week, she rediscovered this particular skill, and now she rolls like crazy. So much so, that I actually caught her in mid-air after she rolled off the corner of the bed in her room. No photo evidence of that, unfortunately.

Next big milestone: first cereal! (I'll first say that until I was very pregnant, I was always mystified when people talked about cereal for babies. I didn't get it. Cereal?? Like Cheerios?? For those who are similarly confused, here it is: baby cereal is basically gruel. It comes in powder form, usually a single ground-up grain, to which you add breast milk or formula or whatever. Like cream of wheat, except babies usually start with rice. Ok. Moving on.)

The first rice cereal feeding was a huge hit. The kid was lunging at the spoon, and grabbing my wrist to bring the stuff in faster. Since then, the novelty has worn off, and perhaps the fact that the stuff is pretty flavorless has caught on. But she still seems decently eager to eat solid food, which is a big signal to me that we are entering Real Baby Land. By this I mean: so far, life with Lea has been decently simple. We haven't required much gear, and quite a few of the typical items you associate with babies have been pretty absent from her life-- bottles, pacifier, rattles, bibs, etc. But now that she's eating something other than my milk, she seems a lot more like what I always pictured all babies to be. Messy, for starters.




Another baby item that is new to us-- a real crib! Until last week, Lea slept in our room, in the bassinet feature of a Pack-n-Play (basically a small, portable crib). We had the P-n-P right next to our bed, which made nighttime feedings so easy I practically slept through them. But the bassinet has a weight limit, which we are rapidly approaching, so we finally got around to setting up the crib in Lea's room. I had a lot of fun prettying up her room, and once it was basically finished: first night's sleep in her own crib!



Here's some other views of her room:






Oh yeah, and....

First time I really felt like I was living out a scene from The Day after Tomorrow. Snow-- slushy snow, and less than an inch-- but SNOW. On April 15th. Apparently nor'easters can find their way to central Appalachia.