Tough times, but at least he's cute....

The long version...

A week ago we decided that it would be a great idea to start Gavin on his first solid foods...rice cereal. The prior week we started skipping the late night feeding (10 pm) as well, because we were waking him up half the time to get him to eat. He actually seemed to do pretty well skipping the last meal of the night, until we gave him the cereal.

We started with just a tablespoon of cereal mixed with some milk from mom to get a nice soup going. The first few days of trying to get him to eat the cereal, he couldn't quite understand what we were doing to him. We would put a spoonfull in his mouth and he would just smile and push it all right back out with his tongue. Nice! After 2 or 3 days of this, he finally understood what we were trying to do and swallowed his first bite. He actually loved it! We did a few more days of this without too much trouble, and then things seemed to go down hill.

He started getting up several times in the night (sometimes every other hour) and would just cry and be super upset. Since he generally is a fairly happy baby, this was a bit weird. Also, he started really hating being put on his changing table or anywhere else on his back. He would just instantly start screaming. What to do! After several nights of this, I think we realized it might have something to do with the cereal...maybe it was giving him stomach cramps or something. So we stopped feeding him cereal. Although that might have been the problem, he still continued with the same symptoms. At one point we thought, maybe its an ear infection. So, we took him into the doctor...but no dice there. A day or so later he started coughing in the night and had a raspy voice. Finally! I think we might have the culprit. I think he was getting sick for the first time and clearly that affected him. We have him on a nice treatment of humidifier/salt nose drops/the occassional tylenol, and that combination seems to be doing the trick.

That seems to be the hardest part of parenthood, especially for the first child: too many variables all changing at the same time. This too often leads to many sleepless nights for everyone involved. But, at the end of the day, when you get a face like this one (see above)...it is still all VERY worth every hard moment.