Food

, originally uploaded by beebo wallace

We started Ashley on "solid" foods a while ago. My wife has made some of it herself, which is cool. She mushes up the vegetables and separates them into individual servings in an ice cube tray and freezes it for later. When it's dinnertime, we pry out one cube of food and thaw.

Eating is a fun new game. Her technique leaves something to be desired, but you can't fault her enthusiasm. She dives nose-first into each spoonful of oatmeal and sometimes she even gets some into her mouth and swallows it. She understands the basic concept. We could tell she was ready when she started taking an interest in watching us eat and drink.

Fun fact: this is also a new form of cheap entertainment. To keep her busy, all I need to do is open a bag of chips. She will stare for several minutes, enraptured, while I fire them down my yapper. The last time I had an audience watching me eat was when my Japanese host family was teaching me to eat soup with chopsticks. Now the student has become the master.