food for Lydia

Today is the one month anniversary of Lydia's first encounter with solid food (first official encounter, that is.... Julianna tried to feed her a pretzel when she was about ten weeks old!) At 7 1/2 months, she's a big food fan! She's eaten at least 15 different things (not including the stuff she tries to steal off of my plate) and pretty much likes it all. At lunch today she tried papaya - I don't like it, but she cast her vote with Matt and Julianna- papaya was a winner!

All of Lydia's food is homemade... and, therefore, seasonal. Papaya is everywhere right now, so that's what's on the menu. If she wants to try peaches, she'll have to wait til June. I know making your own baby food sounds a bit like "Martha Stewart meets Laura Ingalls Wilder", but it's really very easy. Especially when you have 20 hours a week of extremely competent, wonderfully-part-of-our-family house help like Xiao Li! Here she is with a bunch of carrots ready for the food processor.


After the food is ground up, it goes straight to the freezer...

This is our fridge/freezer combo in the kitchen... it's pretty small (as in, SIGNIFICANTLY shorter than I am!) I also have a deep freezer where I keep pretty much everything else.

Lydia loves to try to feed herself. She's fairly successful with Cheerios and is very effective at spreading rice everywhere! Another of Lydia's favorite moves is to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand and then smear the remains on her eyebrows. It's pretty cute. But also a bit difficult to clean up. I've gotten in the habit of wiping off her eyebrows every diaper change, just to collect the excess crusted food she's storing up there!

Yes, I know mommies are supposed to keep their kids picture-perfect clean and camera-ready.... but if there was a mom-school class on "post-meal kid face cleaning" I'd would need to get some tutoring if I hoped to get a passing grade. I'm a fan of the "quick swipe with a damp washcloth" method which is mildly effective at best... but hey, the girls love it. Who wants to endure a thorough cleaning when your belly is full and you're ready to get back to some serious playing with your toys??