Girl, You Couldn't Get Much Higher

Solid Foods have begun. Actually, they began a little while ago, with me, my mom, and Ryan all crouching around a disgusted Ara on the floor of the living room, trying to entice her with increasingly sugary morsels. We started out with the recommended Rice Cereal (organic of course!). We had heard wonderful stories from two women in the "neighborhood" (read: communist block apartment complex). They both claimed that the addition of a little baby rice to their childrens' diets resulted in a shift from 2 hour sleeps to EIGHT HOUR SLEEPS! So we were pretty excited. They both said their kids gulped down the baby rice (or as the scottish of the two put it, beebee rayce) and then conked out for hours. Well, Ara did neither of these. She DESPISED the beebee rayce, and then slept worse than ever before. So much for silver bullets filled with beebee rayce. Finally, however, we reasoned that there were more reasons than just Ara's sleep patterns for starting her on solid foods in earnest. We had to admit that, while convenient, it was unlikely that Ara would continue to drink from bottles into her 20's. Also, she was starting to reject the bottle, and do fake chewing a lot. But even still, the beebee rayce was going NOWHERE! We then tried beebee oatmeal, but still nothing. Then banana! Re-Jected! Finally, in a fit of teething, screaming madness, we tried maple-flavored teething biscuit! And we had success. Ara was totally happy with the teething biscuit. She could hold it herself, and slam it into her mouth, drool all over it, and best yet, chew it! But man cannot live on teething biscuit alone, so eventually we mixed teething biscuit with oatmeal (melting the biscuit to make the whole thing taste mapley) and voila! We had a child who actually likes oatmeal! (she still can't stand beebee rayce though). So, as we progressed from sloppy to sloppier, we realized that the hover wasn't going to work. To feed her on the living room floor we had to prop her up on the sheepskin, cover it with protective muslins, and then hope that she could sit up unsupported long enough to get her food down (and by "down" I mean "everywhere within a metre radius"). This was a messy business. Finally, we had to admit the wisdom in yet another conventional baby item, and came to terms with the fact that highchairs were not just a marketing ploy. Out we went, now with another grandmother (Farmar - the grandmother formerly known as "Syd") and grandfather (Opa!!) on a death march to find the perfect highchair. Well - there are LOTS of varieties of high chairs out there in the world, and nearly all of them are either incredibly ugly, or wildly expensive (though tasteful to a degree only attainable by the Danes or Swedes), or totally impractical (a high chair with no little table? With no safety harness?? WITH NO CHAIR??!!). Just when we thought all was lost, we found, to our surprise, a wooden (for the yuppy in us), practical (has both a table, AND a safety harness), inexpensive (for the chepos in us), high chair that converts - get this - into a little table and chair for later use (for the ever-diminishing sensible in us). What's more, it had a whimsical animal (cow? giraffe??) for a back cushion. So Farmar and I wrestled the high chair home, while daddy and Opa partied it up in Lan Kwai Fong watching the premiership in an "Irish" pub owned by an Aussie. We were actually kind of nervous about how Ara would take to her new piece of furniture. We'd bought her a chair in the past: a Chicco Rocker, which was more stylish than babyish, even we had to admit. We also had to admit that she's just not that into it. As in, she wants out of it! Invariably. So it was with bated breath that we observed Ara's first few minutes in the high-chair. Amazingly, she LOVED it!! She banged her toys on the little table, just like we'd hoped she would, and then dutifully spat out an entire meal while laughing her head off.