Food Ninja

Watching a baby human learn how to eat solid foods is a fascinating thing. All sorts of thoughts run through my mind when I see it happen. The messy faces and gumming of soft pastel colored spoons trigger a train of thoughts that lead me into all sorts of different places. When I watch babies learn to eat, I often think of really really old people at places like Luby’s or Furs- where the food is bland and the old people are so old that they have lost their ability to eat food that has little more consistency than baby food.

I think of what it was like for my mom and dad to feed me baby food for the first time, and the conversations they had and the endearing “oohing” and “ahhing” they must have done, like all parents do. I wonder how often my mom got pissed at my dad while they were learning to be parents and how many times he may have slept on the couch.

Then I think of my parents getting old someday- too old to eat food that has little more consistency than baby food, and I imagine that I may have to help feed them stuff like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. How old will they live to be? Who will live the longest? Will they have all their teeth?

Then thoughts shift to my own impending old age, and wondering if my kids will be feeding me too. Will I have all my teeth by then? (God I hope so) Will I need to spoon feed Taylor when he gets super old too, or will I already be dead? And if I am alive and spoon feeding him, will we still be arguing about the same stupid stuff that we argue about now, then, even while I'm spoon feeding him grits or saltless chicken noodle soup?

Life goes by so quickly- and this really trips me out sometimes. Babies get your brain moving in overdrive about this crazy circle of life we humans go through. I didn't think about it all that much before I had me some babies. I just concentrated on the now and the fun stuff. Now it's the past and the present and the future in every which way direction, and the smallest weirdest things set my mind off.

Baby Mochi started rice cereal this week and it’s a pretty big deal. I take note of how big a deal this is each time she eats it because I feel like in retrospect with Jude, I didn’t acknowledge just how quickly these little milestone moments actually go by with children. This reality hits home when I see Mochi seated next to her brother in the same green Bumbo chair he was in eating rice cereal for the first time, seemingly 5 minutes ago.

  

Not playing favorites by any means- but it is what it is when I say that Baby Mochi is a saving grace of sunshine in my life these days. Amidst the challenges of taming a toddler- whom I love to the moon and back, and who lights up my days in his own unique ways that only he can do- my little butterball baby just lights up my every days.

From the moment she wakes up smiling and baby talking to herself, waiting for me to come get her in the morning, until the end of the day, when I nurse her and she falls asleep on my chest with her thumb in her mouth, and I put her in her crib and she rolls over without a fuss and drifts off to baby dreamland.


She’s a little slice of heaven on Earth.

The healthiest, happiest, most rosy-faced little Baby Mochi in all the land.

She’s been eyeing our food and drinks in a serious way for weeks now- smacking her tiny heart shaped mouth and staring at us with sparkly, inquisitive eyes while we eat. When we finally fed her her rice cereal for the first time, I realized that we have a food ninja on our hands. I have never seen such an aggressive baby with a bowl of baby food. We literally had to pry the purple spoon out of her kung fu grip- and then she would sit with her mouth open like a baby bird, flapping her arms around and squealing like an excited little piglet, eager for more.

I just love this compliant, adoring, easy to please, all-I-want-to-do-is-snuggle-and-eat-sleep part of a child's life. I am learning to soak it up and enjoy every second of it, before she develops an opinion and learns the word "No!"

Not that I have anything to worry about in that department. Not my daughter. 

I just know that my sweet little angel will never grow up and give me a hard time like her brother. No way. Not my baby cakes. Not my little girl. She's going to stay sweet and cooperative for forever!

Yeah right. She comes from me. I'm doomed!

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