We started Tara on rice cereal yesterday. She’s just short of six months old, and, like Anna, we waited until she was older because there seems to be some evidence that doing so may be linked to a lower incidence of allergies. Since Jen and I both had childhood allergies, we thought it would be worth it to wait¹. Tara was totally into it, once we settled exactly who was in control of the spoon. Today, I gave her another serving and let Anna feed her a little bit. We videotaped both feedings, and one day I may even get them posted. Lately it has been really difficult to get any computer time to fiddle with photos. You’ll just have to wait.

Before dinner, Anna was getting Tara to laugh by swooping down and tickling her, then leaning back out of view again. It was pretty funny to see them both cracking up, playing together. I hope it’s only the beginning.

Tonight we did a dry run on Anna’s “wacky hair day” do, and she liked it a lot. Initially I had no idea what I was going to do. Anna inherited Jennifer’s very fine hair, and it’s pretty difficult to manage. I really didn’t want to put any sort of gunk in her hair to hold it in some style, so I just put ten ponytails all over the place. I think it turned out sufficiently wacky–when I was done, Anna ran to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror and busted out laughing. I’ll have to remember to bring my camera to school tomorrow so I can get a pic of her with her wacky-haired friends.

Today is Tuesday, and the downstairs is still clean; this is four days in a row. There is hope.

¹ For the record, Anna currently has no known food allergies.