A Boy and his Tongue...

It is out of control! I have to keep reminding him to put his tongue back in his mouth!

In wonderful news: the other night we had 2 major breakthroughs on the road of parenting. The first (drumroll, please) - he ate broccoli and asked for seconds!! Whenever we eat broccoli, I put some "little trees" on his plate - usually he takes them off and gives them to me, but this time he asked for some, and when I offered to dip one in ketchup for him, he actually ate it. And another. And more! And I had to get some more frozen trees out of the freezer, since JK and I had already eaten the rest.
Alright, to some parents this is nothing, but I can now add a vegetable to his meager list - carrots, cucumber and corn! Although when he was still a baby, I had imagined JT as a little gourmand, eating all the foods that we enjoy - tofu, vegetables, stews, and Austrian, Italian, Chinese, Indian, etc., cuisine, he turned out to be a "bit" finicky. I think it all harks back to a silly rule of giving the child one food only for a week when switvching to solids to "to rule out allergies." (I.e. you give the child purreed carrots, then the next week you add to that pureed peaches, and so on.) Not only was that process annoying, but we have NO history of food allergies in the immediate family. (Okay, I claimed that I was allergic to tomatoes for years, but I can now tolerate them. And other sisters may make a similar claim, but there was never any "real" allergy.) I did feel that this precaution was over cautious when he was little, but I mostly stuck with it "just in case." Because if he had been allergic, I would have felt quite guilty if I hadn't stuck to the plan. Ah, guilt. Even the threat of it makes us do strange things.
Oh, and the second breakthrough - he slept the whole night through without waking up! From 9pm to 7:30, he slept without calling out for mama (or "Chris, Chris, I need Chris," as he called out the other night). Normally he wakes up at least once and needs a little help getting back to sleep, so I often end up sleeping a few hours in his bed. (He refuses to sleep in our bed.) But perhaps he had some good dreams and didn't need me. My sleep was interrupted anyways - Diego, our quite plump cat, woke me up at 4 am because he was hungry.

Picture: the Fern Street Circus on Sunday.