Adventures in Baby Feeding

Today's Recipe: Diane's Amazing Soup

Well, week one of month eight in The Life of Lily Ruth has brought new adventures, new challenges, and (as always) big fun.

'What HAPPENED!?' you ask? Let me lay it out for ya!

Lily Ruth started Parent's Day Out. Day one went 'o.k' - caregiver code for 'she cried a lot, but there were some good moments in there, too'. Day two was apparently a scream-fest from the minute I handed her over. It was bad, ya'll. To the point that when I got back to pick her up, they asked 'how she was at home' - caregiver code for 'does she ever stop crying, ever?' I rocked her in the rocking chair there until she was calm. She then took a deep breath, climbed off my lap and started playing on the floor. She was laughing and smiling immediately. They were amazed and very surprised... too bad for Lily - I'm dropping her off on Wednesday come hell or high water - I've got things to do! She'll be fine.

We took Lily Ruth to her first birthday party! One of her (two) friends had his first birthday, and we were invited. I'm pretty sure that I managed to horrify the other mothers there (all related to our hostess) by feeding my newly-eight-month-old 'real food' off my own plate. She even had small amounts of ice cream and cake. She was THRILLED.

Which brings me to the next part - baby food... or the lack thereof. A few weeks ago, Lily Ruth lost interest in my lovingly handmade purees :-( She did, however, gain a great deal of interest in anything that I was eating. We had introduced a lot of foods by that point (avocados, peas, bananas, brown rice, apples, Greek yogurt, butternut squash, mango, spinach, blueberries, cherries, egg yolk, peaches, carrots, chicken), and we used the 4-day-rule for all of it. She displayed no reactivity or sensitivity to anything we gave her... so I got brave, and chucked the rules. As of last week, she eats what I eat! Now, I'm still holding off on the 'big no-nos' (honey, peanut butter, cow's milk, etc.) until she's a year old, but the rest of it is pretty much ON! Ya'll, I thought that it was fun to choose which foods to puree for her next, but it is WAY more fun to plan meals for us that she can share all or part of :-D

She started with baked potatoes and turkey meatballs at Nanny's house (we let her cover herself and the table with potato!), and progressed to pork tenderloin tacos on whole wheat tortillas. Since then, she's been a wild woman at the table who tries (and LOVES) things like mac'n'cheese made with spinach noodles, fresh orange & tangerine juice, pretty much everything they are sampling at Central Market. Oh, and yesterday, she flipped for a new soup recipe with sausage, lentils and spinach - as did I.

Said soup deserves it's own paragraph. It's THAT GOOD. The recipe comes from my Mama's good friend Diane. She is a WONDERFUL cook, and an ardent gardener. I love her blog. She captures the wild, rough, individualistic beauty of South Texas in her pictures while making gardening sound like something I might be able to do someday! I've been secretly yearning to start a garden, and may even start small with kitchen herbs this year. I just need to find the time and the energy... At any rate, the soup recipe can be found here. As you may have noticed, my lack of an attention span makes recipe following a tricky business. I managed to buy 1 Lb instead of 1/2 a Lb of Italian sausage. Also, I forgot the celery. I also need to mention that I am so used to putting garlic in literally everything that I cook, that I almost minced some and added it before I realized that the recipe doesn't call for any. A lesson can be learned here, folks - garlic is not mandatory. Even with my unintentional changes, it was beyond fantastic, and it was super easy to make! Now, if you make the soup and like it, let her know! In fact, if you make any of the recipes that I share with you, let ME know!

Happy Eating, Folks!

By the way, there is standing and practice laughing happening over here! You should come over!