Sometimes we'll reach into Eila's mouth and feel her gums. Lately it's been a different experience every time, sometimes they'd be a bit swollen and sometimes not.

This morning I noticed something hard and sharp in there...

Eila now has a tooth (albeit the tiniest bit of one).

It's still a bit difficult to see (Eila does not, in fact, enjoy the "force the mouth open and push the tounge aside so I can look at your gums/teeth" move) for a variety of reasons, but you can definitely *feel* it.

**UPDATE**: The second tooth was soon to follow and the two bottom teeth are through the gums now. Now it's a little more dicey trying to feel around in there...those things are sharp!

Eila possesses the uncanny ability to detect when something she's not supposed to have has come within an arm's length of her. This area is also known as the "eila zone of destruction" or EZD.

For instance, we're eating dinner -- and as I hold her in my lap I push my food into the middle of the table. But, at some point during the time I am playing with her, I have moved her closer to the plate than I realize and --BAM-- food and fork are flying across the room with one quick swipe of her hand.

All this time, I thought the plate was safely out of her reach. But her EZD sensors have detected the object entering the destruction zone, and guided her hands on a true trajectory.

Now, I wouldn't normally be that impressed -- she's pretty strong and nimble recently, but Eila still is a little tenuous when I hold something right in front of her face. It still takes her a second to make good contact between hand and object. But in these cases, something mostly behind her gets struck in one fluid movement. It's uncanny.

Last night Eila made it through the whole night without waking up. This was her first time in a long time. She had been needing to eat at around 4am, so we've been working on increasing her daytime consumption. Now with the introduction of rice cereal in addition to her liquid diet, she is now able to make it 8 hours without eating. Mornings are much happier around the house now.

Eila ate her first solid food this weekend...rice cereal. She seemed to like it, only spitting out some of what made it to her mouth. We'll see how things go in a few weeks/months as the food gets more and more solid, and more and more colorful and flavorful...

Shannon has also decided to take a stab at making her own baby food, so this rice cereal is homemade (in as much is that we ran the brown rice through a blender first before cooking it). I think we're planning on sweet potatoes next, but that's still a bit down the road.

The rice cereal actually wasn't too bad. Maybe I'll make myself up a big bowl with a little (cow's) milk in it.