I know I say this practically every month, but... The fifteenth? Already? Where the heck did the month go?

So we tried Penny on some carrots last night. Matt took pictures, but he didn't have the camera ready for her very first bite of food with actual flavor, so he missed her fantastically funny, Oh my god what the fuck is this? face.

So we entered the dance that every parent knows: I'd wedge a bit of cereal into her mouth, and she'd open eagerly for the next spoonful, and I'd trick her with a spoonful of carrots.

But after a little bit, we had a pretty good run where she ate just carrots for a while, so I think it'll be okay. She only took about half the jar (little one-serving jar) but that's fine, too, for just getting used to it for the first time.

In case you're wondering - yes, I tasted the baby food myself. I don't think I could bring myself to eat strained meats, but the strained and mashed carrots did in fact taste like carrots. No sweat there.

Ever since the daycare people told us at the beginning of the week that Penny's been getting hungry in less than 2 hours, I've been kind of sweating her feeding situation. She's already taking what the doctor's office told us ought to be the maximum amount of formula each day. But all the feeding guides I could find online have only told us how much food to start with; they don't really suggest how much we ought to be feeding her altogether.

I've been trying to convince myself that it'll be okay if Penny's a chubby baby, but it hasn't really been working. I really don't want to project my own weight issues onto her, but I must admit I'm sort of failing.

But last night I checked the doctor's sheet again. It says that babies need approximately 50 calories per pound per day. So Penny, at 18 pounds or so, needs around 900 calories a day. 32 ounces of formula - which is what we've been trying to limit her to, based on the doctor's recommendation - is around 650 calories. 4 tablespoons of cereal, which is how much she got yesterday (in two meals of 2Tbsp each) is about 60 calories. A full serving of carrots is about 30 calories - and she only took half that.

And suddenly it all makes sense. The feeding schedule is assuming she's an average-sized 5-month-old, at about 15 pounds. Not our chunk. No wonder she's hungry. So an extra four or so ounces of formula a day isn't going to hurt her, while we work on getting the amount of solid food in her diet up to a level to satisfy her.

Now I feel a little less neurotic. Or maybe a little more. It's hard to tell.

I wrote a good 1500 words yesterday. It was a great day for me for writing.

If only I'd done all that work on the novel. Instead, I'd made the mistake in the morning of skimming over some old half-finished bits I have floating around, and one of them - originally intended to be an character sketch for a character who is mentioned but never actually appears in the novel - an erotic piece, written for my own amusement, kind of grabbed my imagination and took off.

I polished up the bit that was already there, and kept writing, and suddenly it was 3500 words long, and while it still has lots of potential for eroticism, there actually isn't any yet, and I'm getting far too far into the head of the point-of-view character, who isn't the person the story was supposed to be about in the first place. In the meantime, the character I was originally intending to take a peek at is refusing to come out where I can see him.

So I don't know where this is going. A companion short story to the series, in the same universe but wholly unrelated to the overarching plot that connects all the other novels we have planned? Or a whole novel? Could it be hooked into the overarching plot? (I know, K.T. would kill me if I added another novel to the roster.) Or maybe it'll just be a character exercise. Or else I'll eventually get around to working the erotic bits in.

I just wish I could get that deeply hooked into the novel writing.

--Liz