When Oliver was first born he slept between 4 and 5 hours at a stretch most nights, with a few 6-hour snoozes thrown in once in a while, too. It was nice because it meant we kept as rested as parents with a newborn could hope to be, but sadly it was not meant to last. Little by little Oliver would sleep less during a single stretch and before long we found that he'd be up every two hours like clockwork, ready to eat. Thankfully he would always fall right back asleep after feeding, but being woken up so often really started to wear on us. But because we knew (or at least assumed) he was getting up merely because he was hungry we decided a few weeks ago to try feeding him rice cereal to see if he liked it and, if so, to see if having a more full belly would help him sleep longer at night.
Well, right now we don't have to fight to get food into him: he gets excited the moment he's dropped into his highchair, and has moved from our small trial bowls up to full-fledged cereal meals. He does a pretty good job keeping the food in his mouth, but because he often trades spoonfuls of cereal with some thumb-in-the-mouth time he can't help but get cereal all over himself.
Part of me is proud to see him so rarin' to go for his meals now and can't wait to see if he'll grow up to be the next Takeru Kobayashi or Joey Chestnut, but part of me fears that someday down the road he'll eat us out of house and home. For now, we'll just make sure he gets enough to keep growing and sleeping longer at night.
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