Hazel's First Food

Maniilaq Health Center did a rather nice job of wining and dining us (minus the wining of course). We met the med staff at the Bayside Restaurant for dinner Monday evening. The food was great and the people were fun and we were having a lovely time. Except for one thing: it was past Hazel's bedtime (9:30 in the time zone she's used to) and she was done being the perfectly cooperative, patient, flexible baby she'd been all day. Aaron and I were taking turns with her, and it was going OK, but towards the end of dinner, she was frazzled and we were desperate to entertain her long enough to get dessert. I mean, we have priorities. The plants you see behind me here distracted her nicely for a couple of minutes, but when she started tasting them and tugging on them, I decided it would be better if she didn't kill the only living plant I had seen in Kotzebue, and Hazel was pretty mad to say the least when I delicately extricated its leaves from her grasp. I looked around in desperation for something new and novel to hold her attention. Aha--an onion ring.

Instantly, the fussing stopped. She loved it. Cool texture. New to look at.

As babies do, she stuffed it in her mouth. Wow! Check out these eyes and her tongue just going at it to get more of that salty fried taste.

Her first real food. She did try bland old rice cereal the beginning of March, but it wasn't going so well so I backed off. I'm afraid we ruined her in one fell swoop. If she won't eat that bland rice cereal when I try again this week, I'll know why. Maybe if I batter and fry it... Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.

This was some pretty good entertainment for the whole table. When she sucked it enough that a soggy chunk of the fried batter started coming off, we were all a little concerned about how she'd react when I had to take it away. Amazingly, she didn't mind at all when we traded it for a napkin she could shred. Phew. We could finish our dessert. I had an ice cream sundae. It seemed fitting in my icy surroundings. Although it did make me a bit chillier as we walked back to our hotel right after.