Weekly update.

Maia is taking her first nap of the day right now (it almost always is first-nap-time about one hour after when she wakes up), and so I'll take the opportunity to write a bit about how we're doing. We've been fortunate to have seen many of our family members over the last week, so many of you have had time to hold and hang out with Maia recently.

She's been eating her avocado meals eagerly, and each one becomes a bit quicker and less messy. She ate her avocado for dinner with Brian yesterday, and he says that she really seems eager for each spoonful and to have the new taste in her mouth. So, today, we're going to try sweet potato! Brian steamed the sweet potato yesterday evening, blended it with a bit of milk, and froze cubes of it in our baby food cube trays (like ice cube trays, but with a special cover, and a bit smaller). So she'll have sweet potato once a day this week, and then we'll probably move on to banana or pears or something like that.

We've learned that, not surprisingly, there are wildly divergent theories on how to start babies on solid foods. Some people say at three months, some at four (we've ignored them, obviously). Many people agree that six months seems like a good age, although you'll hear from others who say seven, or nine, or twelve! Most say start on rice cereal, but there are some very strong and distinct voices out there who say "No way!" to that. In the last six months, I'd say that this might be the most confusing topic in terms of how vastly different the "experts" opinions can be. So, last night, Brian and I finally said, "We're going to choose one authoritative voice whom we will listen to, for the most part. We're going to pretty much ignore what the others say." That choice felt really good to me (for what it's worth, we decided to stick with the La Leche League/William Sears approach to solids).

We haven't tended to adhere to one "expert" voice thus far, so I'm wondering why it feels good to do so in this case. Perhaps it's because, when it comes to food, you can ask what seems like a simple question--such as how runny the first solid food should be--and get answers that are completely opposite from each other. The responses are so driven by philosophy that it's necessary that we know what our philosophy is before we decide which answer seems most reasonable to us. Because of the reading we've done, we've been able to assess which books and websites and modes of thinking seem most in-tune with the type of parents we hope to be. Then it's possible to figure out why the "experts" are saying what they're saying. (I keep putting "expert" in quotes not because I don't think they deserve the title, but more because I think that title should always be viewed with a skeptical mind and critical eye . . . particularly when it comes to parenting advice.) Believe it or not, one of the bestselling books on parenting has earned a warning from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Would you ever know that from the book itself? Of course not. And it's still on the bookshelf right next to the others.

So anyway . . . on to sweet potatoes! :)