Eating.

So I often get asked about Lara's eating. What is she eating?, Is she a good eater?, How do you make your own baby food?, etc. and so forth.

Lara is a FANTASTIC eater. First, she eats everything, and insists on it. Second, she eats A LOT. I typically stop when she starts rubbing her eyes and slowing down. In general, though, she doesn't have much of a shut-off valve. Last night, for instance, her supper consisted of: bananas, carrots, chicken, baked beans, and tomato. I let her feed herself at supper and she is a pretty fast eater. Interestingly enough, as I was in the middle of this blog, I stopped to get my family supper. I had just typed about the fact that Lara is a pretty clean eater, and even if she drops food on her bib, she will attempt to pick it up. We don't usually have a big mess to clean up. Of course, since I had typed that, this evening Lara decided she was going to throw her green beans all over the floor!!

I do still make my own baby food, as she is not exclusively on table foods yet, of course. For breakfast, she has lentil porridge with bananas, and sometimes egg yolk, and sometimes avacado (avacados are expensive, so we don't eat them every day). Avacados are one of the BEST foods you can give a baby, as I recently read. I have never really had avacados by themselves, and in preparing them for Lara, I tasted them and have decided that I certainly don't like them. This is the hardest part about making your own baby food. I have to be careful not to lick my fingers. For lunch, she gets the baby food I puree for her, though she would prefer my salad or sandwich. And she always gets yogurt/cottage cheese. She eats a wide variety of foods: plums, pears, brussel sprouts, eggplant, green beans, yellow squash (which we have to mix with apple so she will eat it and we call it "squashelsauce") and so on.

There's nothing to making your own baby food, and I think some people think there is. You just cook the veggie like you always do (well, you should steam them, but I don't have a steamer), then simply add water and puree them in the blender. When I am done, I pour it into ice cube trays to freeze them. When I am ready to feed Lara, I grab several cubes and thaw them in the microwave, and we're set. People who make baby food always say that it's not hard, and you don't spend much more time doing it than grabbing a baby food jar. Well, it's not hard, no, but it's definitely NOT as easy and time-saving as grabbing a baby food jar. But it is healthier, and cheaper (1lb of bananas will get us through about one week at 4o cents. A Stage 2 jar of bananas is 43 cents, and that is just for one meal). And I am learning how to cook a lot of things and how to recognize things as well (like what an eggplant looks like). There are some things I don't bother making, though, like sweet potatoes and pumpkin. Pumpkin sounds too hard to do, and I haven't seen any sweet potatoes yet at my WalMart. So I just buy the baby food jars of these foods.

I already mentioned that Lara is on whole milk now...from a sippy cup or bottle, she does alright with either one, but she does prefer a bottle. So we are working on getting away from the bottle.

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Tonight, I ran into Lara's dark bedroom to get something out of her closet. Thinking the doors were closed, I ran straight toward the closet, and in my rush in the dark room, did not realize they were, in fact open. So I smashed my head into the door! My head is still really sore, and I am praying I don't wake up with a black eye and a bruised forhead! How silly of me!

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