A Meal with Emil

My poor neglected blog, it's been a whole year!! Forgive me as I play a bit of catch up! Here's my only excuse. I spent a few months interning as a dairy cow, and the schedule was quite demanding :)  There is now another little insatiable appetite in our house, which has added even more fun to our adventures in eating! Our son Emil is acclimating very quickly.  After all, to borrow the phrase of a wise 10 year old, "He's not just a snack, he's A-meal!".

The first few months were spent just trying to keep everyone fed.  Sounds easy enough, but at 6am I was usually tripping over the cat demanding his morning 'treat', while searching for my nursing pillow as Emil wails in the background.   Feeding the adults is a whole other thing...it takes a little practice to get dinner on the table while caring for a newborn! That said, I ate lots of yummy stuff in the name of 'keeping my milk supply up'. Want to know the best gift ever for a new Mom? My neighbors & friends organized a dinner delivery schedule when we got home from the hospital!  They went totally overboard and brought us dinner for like, 10 days!  Ten days!? Of course I had to bake some treats to say Thank You :)

 

We always said we would try to take full advantage of those first few months of eternal slumber...when babies will sleep anywhere, blissfully unaware of their surroundings.  So, I bellied up to the sushi bar with Emil slumbering in the sling.  When he wanted to be held during dinner, Rybo got creative while eating his soup (please don't try that at home. Eating soup while holding a baby isn't the best idea we've had). Pretty soon, I discovered I had lots of time for cooking at home too!  We have been blessed, Emil is a great sleeper!  He naps, I cook :) 

Secretly, I feared getting a picky eater baby.  Mother nature has a sense of humor like that, you know? So far, Emil has been eager to receive 'tastes' of just about anything we are eating.  I'm surprised I'm not more uptight about what he's eating, but with no family history of food allergies, my intuition told me it was ok.  The only thing I have tried to stay away from is honey...infant botulism doesn't sound like something to mess around with.  

And we're off...into this colorful world of messy mealtimes, disturbances during dinners, and more fun than we were ever having before!  Its as if my whole life I needed WAY more for WAY less enjoyment in the end.  Truth be told, seeing my baby grin at me, avocado smeared ear to ear, is all the happiness in the world.  Now I know :)