blessed.

Soluna waited until the day after her baptism to start making bigger moves. I like to think that she had to be blessed before feeling ready to move onto the next major world-altering stage. Who could blame her? She's been getting into everything and after picking her up and seeing a bunch of hair, dust and unidentifiable particles on her butt, I realized I need to be better about keeping our wood floors clean.

I am starting to relax so much more as a mama, but not completely. I talked about how I'm not a germ-a-phobe and now I easing up on my original food plans. I am still not a "whatever goes" kinda person and I do hope Soluna and the whole family eats healthier. But, I am more willing to experiment with food options for her hoping that she gets some more Filipino and Mexican food tastes before she turns one. But still a big "no" to junk food and fried food.

It kind of annoyed me though that while I was holding her, her Abuelo felt the need to quickly shove sweets in her mouth so we had no chance to protest. And, I might not have minded so much, but the grandparents feel like they have to "sneak" things to her like she's being deprived.

My mom is constantly frowning at Soluna as I feed her vegetables and says "eeewww... yucky." And, even though Soluna is usually pretty happy eating avocados, my mom insists that she doesn't like it and that I should mix it with milk AND SUGAR. What the heck? When I didn't want to give her fries, she was like, "THAT'S WHAT YOU ATE AS A KID. McDonads and french fries and sweets."... I WAS A FAT KID WHO TOOK LIKE 11 MINUTES TO RUN THE MILE!!! I hope they weren't feeding me McDonald's before I turned 1... I kinda hope Soluna has a healthier start than I did. Seriously, I had hella cup-o-noodles, fried chicken, fried fish, and chicken nugget happy meals.

We also returned 3 boxes of bottles a few weeks ago. Soluna skipped the bottle stage. She's been drinking water from a cup or glass since she was about 6 months or maybe even before then. After I would drink something she would just make a gesture to have me put the glass to her mouth. We've had some spills, but she's pretty good at it.

So besides crawling, eating and drinking... she is also starting to clap more, use her hands so much better, say "mama", "dada" and "papa,"...

Changes... changes...

on a more practical food note...

Today I made my first batches of baby food. I had practically been preparing Soluna's food at each meal. This meant, she ended up eating a lot of avocados. Avocados, I think, are the easiest baby food because all you gotta do is wait until it's ripe, cut it open, scoop the goods out, mash/stir and serve. Avocados are especailly good for healthy baby brain development and my sister says that her Brazilian friends say that it's perfect for fattening babies up!

So anyways, I finally got Soluna's baby food cups in the mail. I made a run to Berkeley Bowl (another hippie mama thing to do) and started making batches of pear and sweet potato baby food. I mean seperately, not together. It was hella easy.

I just steamed the pears (20 minutes) and sweet potatoes (40 minutes). Peeled and cut them up. Popped them into the blender. Pureed them until they were the right consistency. The sweet potatoes needed a little bit of water. And... Tada! Homemade, Super Baby Food. I scooped out the puree into the food cups I bought and popped them into the fridge.

We kept one of the pear cups out for Soluna to try.. not her favorite! I think this might be her first food rejection. But, we're going to try it again in a few days.