Ready or not

It's beginning.

It's starts today.

It starts with his first bites of big people food. 

Jonah will be 6 months old in 11 days, but he has been trying to get food out of my hand or off of my plate for about 2 weeks now.  I decided I needed to worry less about the calender, and listen to his little spirit.  He was telling me he was ready for food.  He salad-napped a piece of my green leaf on Tuesday, which made a reappearance today, if you know what I mean.  Hey, at least it wasn't a penny or a crayon or something. 

Yes, the time had come.

He loved the food tonight.  The first bite of applesauce surprised him, and he puckered and shuddered and blinked one eye like we had given him a lemon.  Then he started screaming, very loudly, for more.  The shuddering stopped, and the hollering before each successive bite got fever pitched.  He began grabbing the spoon to help with the shoveling- clearly I wasn't moving fast enough.  Soon I had to just go nurse him just to settle him down.  The food was just too exciting.

The first food today.  Soon the first steps, the first words, and all of those other firsts that will take him away little by little, from being my baby.

I felt this tiny thing in me flicker and sputter as I sat down to nurse him.  It was the part of me that knows that I am the only thing he needs.  It is the thing that separated us from the rest of the universe.  In some strange way, I gave him to the world today.  Or started to.

If only I was as ready as he seems to be.