Here comes the airplane...

A week of firsts for Oscar. We took our first tenative steps into the world of solid foods, first with a fingerful of mashed banana, then with a rice cereal/breast milk blend, spiked with cinnamon:


He opened right up for it like a pro at first, then made some sour faces. He ate it. He just seemed... unsure about it.

Earlier in the week, he giggled. Not a ha-ha laugh of the sort he's been making for some time, but a sustained, full-throated giggle -- his first ever. Jen was holding him aloft and munching on his belly, and he giggled. Sadly, I missed it, and we haven't been able to coax one out of him since, but she has witnesses.


Yesterday, we went to the Central Park Zoo with his uncle Andrew and cousins Eli and Tiana (above), who were in town from Berkeley. We weren't sure he'd get too much out of it -- as Sue says, you're often unsure whether he's watching what you're watching or the movie in his head. But when we stood him up in front of the penguin tank, he was just delighted, clearly tracking the birds as they did their underwater acrobatics. He also loved the cotton-topped tamarins, cooing and shrieking at the creatures (which seemed to be watching us with almost as much befuddled fascination as we were them), though he wasn't as partial to the red pandas (which are apparently actually just very fashionable racoons). I'm sure we'll be visiting them all often.