Solid Food (kind of)

Maia had her first meal of "solid" food yesterday. The quotation marks are there to signify that her first little meal with a spoon was so diluted with milk that it barely qualifies as solids. More significant, however, is the fact that she ate the meal in her high chair, with a spoon!

We decided not to go the standard route of feeding her rice cereal to begin with. Perhaps it's the more "foodie" side of us, but we thought it would be fun to start her out on a ripe, whole, real food like an avocado. So that's what we picked. Brian mashed the bright green avocado into a nice pulp and then mixed it with milk to the point that it was just a touch thicker than what she's used to. I'll post a few photos rather than try to describe her reaction, because, fortunately, Auntie Jo is visiting from Toronto and was right there taking a bunch of beautiful photos! We don't have them uploaded to the website yet; when we do, I'll let you know.

So, the plan is for Maia to have a bit of her avocado/breastmilk "smoothie" once a day for the next few days. Then, perhaps we'll move on to a sweet potato smoothie! I think that Brian and I have relatively wide palates, and we both really hope that Maia grows up with the same (although I think we're both realistic enough to know that toddler/preschooler rebellion might mess this up for a while). We know that we're her role models with this, which is why we see our trips to the Farmer's Market every week for veggies and fruit to be more than just a grocery shopping trip. It's also some serious modeling that might help Maia develop eating habits that will be easier to deal with (for us) and healthier (for her).

In other news, the pace of my training for my new job is really picking up. I'm in the middle of a six-week Childbirth Preparation series right now (in which I'm observing my mentor teach). I begin my student teaching session on August 14, and then I start teaching on my own on September 10. It's such a pleasure to observe the class, because my mentor is truly a phenomenal instructor. She's a birth doula as well as a childbirth educator, which means she has so much experience with real-life childbirth. She's very up-to-date on current research on childbirth in the U.S., and I've learned so much from her already. I feel very lucky indeed.