Diary of a Baby's First Cheerio


"Pick me! Pick me!" shouted all the cheerios in an eager chorus not at all like the Booklyn Tabernacle Choir.

From fattest Os to the crumbliest, everyone wanted to be Baby's first cheerio, but who was picked? ME! A warm hand curled decisively around me, pucked me up and dangled me in the air, making all kinds of delicious, instructive cooing sounds.

"Gabe! Your very first cheerio...look at that! Would you like to try it?"

Just then I saw my buddy Samual Alfred Julius emerge from the box.

"Look at Mama...Gabe, watch this!"The lady put Sammy plop on her tongue, and with a crunch and a gulp, Samuel Alfred Julius entered the land of esophageal transformation.

Meanwhile, the lady continued to dangle me and gentle press me to the ten-month-old baby's little pink lips. Which utterly refused to budge open a crack, as though to say, "What you are trying pull on me, Ma? I know that's just a toy!"

And before I could say, "Eat me," the little boy picked me up, with remarkable dexterity and began waving me wildly, like a frisky kite, or an airy rollercoaster. Notably, the boy had an impish grin, periodically looking mischieviously at his Mama, bring me close to her face and bursting out in ridiculously joyful cackles.

I sighed. Today would not be the day I'd get to enter the pure cheerio-virgin esophagus of the ten-month-old. Finally the mother lifted the boy from his chair and placed him on the floor to play, shaking her head -- clearly amused. I slid down the tray into a little blue corner; an exiled cheerio wondering, "Will I ever enter the promised land? Or will I die in the desert of family trash, whilst someone else gets to be Baby's first cheerio?

I watched from a distance as the boy crawled off, in mad delight, wildly searching for books to topple, blocks to mouth and Sister's hair to pull with glee. The boy's mother cast a sympathetic look toward me and then turned to go, instantly scooping the boy away from a computer, where he was about to delete her blog. "Gabriel! C'mon, let's go get that blue ball!"