It was kind of a rough weekend. For one thing, Penny's working herself up for teething. I thought she was closer than she is, but now I think we're going to have teeth sometime in the next ten days.

For another, Penny has decided that I am it. The happening thing. The one and only.

If I handed her off to Matt to go to the bathroom, she'd wail. If I put her on the floor to play, she'd try to climb back into my lap. If I had her on my lap and was paying more attention to my computer or a book than to her, she'd get fussy.

For optimum baby happiness, I had to be sitting on the floor beside her, paying attention only to her. Whether or not she was paying any attention to me.

If I tried to check my mail or chat with anyone on IM, she'd decide that she absolutely positively had to play on the computer! Now! Now, Mom, nownownow and hurry up! No, not Dad's computer! MOM'S!

(On the other hand, Matt took a pretty funny movie of her sitting on my lap, playing on the computer. She's obsessed with the CapsLock indicator light.)

Her fussiness was aided and abetted by the fact that she didn't sleep well over the weekend, perhaps due to the imminent teething. For the first time since the third day of sleep training, she had a crying jag that lasted nearly an hour. (In the middle of the night, of course.)

As you can imagine, this was not fun for Matt or I, either one. Being rejected by someone you love intensely is more than a little painful, and Penny, being a couple of years away from any sort of capacity for empathy, rejected Matt frequently and harshly. Though by Sunday, I wanted to be the rejected one. I'm not used to spending that much time on the floor; my back is killing me.

But in good news, she's starting to grudgingly accept food with some texture to it. We've got a jar of "beef and macaroni," which looks mostly like Spaghettio's, but with even smaller noodles, and she's swallowed a few spoonfuls of it at dinner every night for several nights now. She doesn't like it, but only once did she threaten to gag on it and throw up.

So that's progress, of a sort.

This week, after the beef and macaroni turns 1 week old, I'll throw away the leftovers, and we'll attempt "turkey and rice." With bits of vegetable in it!

It took me more than a month to get her to eat enough mushy food to graduate her from the teeny little Stage 1 starter jars to the full four-ounce Stage 2's, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprsied that she's digging in her heels as I try to push her on to Stage 3. How can such a big baby show so little interest in food?

--Liz