Well, the first day of the year has been very eventful for us and it is only 10am! Hayden ate "solid foods" for the first time today! His first meal consisted of Gerber rice cereal mixed with pears and water warmed slightly in the microwave. He loved it! We were worried that he wouldn't take to eating solid foods very well because of his aversion to the bottle. But, man, he got right into it...he even caught on very quickly to opening his mouth for the next bite. He got very messy, but actually kept most of it down and ate quite a bit.

We are going to start with one or two feedings a day (morning and night) of the rice cereal and then move to adding a veggie and fruit to each cereal meal in a few weeks. This will make it so much easier to have someone else feed him if we need to (we are going to have our first babysitter for him on the 14th of January, so this new step comes just in time!).

He also took his first nap of 2005 (currently in progress) with BOTH arms un-swaddled! This is a big step. We have been doing one arm out (switching back and forth between left and right) for a few weeks now and that was going quite well. So, we thought why not try this out today. He went down beautifully and has been asleep for nearly an hour.

He is growing so fast and each new milestone is so exciting to us! We are enjoying every minute of this...even if he hasn't slept through the night again since Christmas! (We had to abandon the sleep training for a few nights over the holidays while we had guests sleeping next door to Hayden's room...I didn't want his "crying it out" to keep our nephew Chad awake. So, last night we were back to it and he woke up a few times, but went back down. I still haven't fed him in the middle of the night since we started the sleep training on Dec. 24th! So, now if he wakes up, he goes back to sleep and then doesn't eat until 4-5am...and slowly we will work that into 6-7am...maybe the solid foods will help with that). This year is going to be filled with so many amazing events (sitting up, crawling, walking, talking, and other fun times) and we are looking forward to creating lasting memories as a family. -- mam