Simone has turned 6 months on Sunday and we've finally have gotten around to start her on solid food. She had been focused on us eating for at least a couple of months, so we didn't anticipate any difficulties.

During our Sunday breakfast at CJ, we mixed her up a bowl of rice cereal and she took to it like a fish to water. As expected, the feedings are a little messy, mostly because she lounges for the spoon when it comes within reach, which throws off your aim and sometime the food ends up in places where it shouldn't.

But it's great having everyone eating at the table during dinner. Simone really gets into it and makes very contented sighs with every spoonful. We'll see how it goes when we introduce more interesting foods. I think Jfer has sweet potatoes and peas planned next.

Magda's become quite the TV junkie and gets to watch way more than I ever did.  Of course, my choices were limited to two black-and-white channels of socialist TV and an older sister with more or less veto power (let me tell you, there was quite a bit of ice skating and gymnastics on ČSSR TV in the '70s).

Despite all the hand wringing about commercial TV for kids, I must say that I'm quite impressed with the options that we have available on our cable.  Time Warner has an on-demand channel for pre-schoolers and all the things that Magda's into is pretty good stuff and comes from PBS Sprout, Noggin and BBC Kids.  Her faves are Miss Spider, Dragon Tales, Caillou, Super Why! and Andy Pandy.  These shows convey good messages and are bearable to be around (with the possibly exception of Andy Pandy whose style, for some reason, makes me cringe).  And, especially the public TV ones, don't have all that many product commercials.

One sign that Magda might be watching just a tad too much was on Sunday, when I asked her what her phone number was and she replied with "1-866-9-SPROUT"...