Death By Cookie

Today Bree tried to kill Otter. He vehemently denies this, but the fact remains. And if anyone were to examine the evidence, (s)he would quickly see that there could be no other reasonable conclusion.

Exhibit A:
Otter has been, and up to this point remains, exclusively breast-fed.

Exhibit B:
For the past month, Otter's been drooling up a storm. My family keeps insisting she's teething but by my estimation, she should have a full mouth of teeth (wisdom included) if she were on their schedule. Which leads me to suspect that she's just sending out gobs of saliva as her body prepares for the introduction of solid food.

Exhibit C:
By some mysterious, internal calculation, I had decided to wait to introduce "real" food until Otter was close to 6 months. I rationalized this by reading guides and pro-breastfeeding websites that advocate holding off. In truth, I am no less driven to wait by the comfort of having one less thing to prepare (we've decided to try and make our own baby food) and the knowledge that diapers are going to get far worse once SB has something less digestible than milk to process. This last fact has me hoping I can keep her on the boob til she's potty trained. Still, time marches on.

Exhibit D:
Until very recently, SB's shown minimal interest in anything that didn't come out of a nipple. The motions we went through to nourish ourselves were no more meaningful to her than vacuuming or doing our taxes. A few weeks ago, however, she became fascinated with things making their way from my hand to my mouth. Though the finer point that I was eating was still lost on her.

Exhibit E:
Today, Otter's figured out what we're doing when we put things in our mouths and chew. And she wants in. Like, now. Suddenly, every morsel eaten by us is a morsel denied to her. She follows the trajectory of every bite with fascinated, envious eyes. She opens her mouth, assuming that much like breast, tea, chip, chicken or whatever else we happen to be eating will tumble in.

Exhibit F:
Unable to ignore the new-found interest, I felt the need to experiment. So, disregarding common sense I took a chunk of carrot and held it out to her. The mouth opened and...she licked. Understanding spread across her face - carrot was sweet. Carrot was good. Otter want carrot.

Now even I know that you can't hand a 5-month-old a piece of carrot and expect any good to come of it. So after the initial lick (or 3) the experiment was done. Which leads me to the crime:

Having observed the carrot licking, and with the full knowledge of all that came before it, Bree took a chocolate, chocolate chip cookie (which, I might add, had been heated and was molten [and hot] in the center) and held it out to her. The aroma of cookie wafted to her baby nostrils and she decided, chocolate chocolate chip cookies were a good thing. The mouth flew open, the tongue began to flick... I dove in to take cookie away.

Now seriously people - I rest my case.