KDUNK

Dear Lili,

This week you started solid foods. For whatever reason I was really, really looking forward to this. I guess for a stay at home Mom it adds another fun thing I can do with you several times during the day. It also fits my anal personality to totally and completely get into preparing things WAY IN ADVANCE – aka – your food – buying fresh ingredients, cooking things, blending things, mixing things, freezing things, etc.

Just the other night I couldn’t sleep. It was 4AM so I hit the kitchen. On the stove I steamed some corn cobs, in the blender I mashed up fruit and in the rice cooker I had some sweet potatoes. I can hear the snickers from well seasoned parents out there – making your own baby food – pft. See how long that lasts. I know I know. I’m guessing this stage is similar to one …lets say in the early courtship of a lovey dovey relationship. Making fresh pasta dough from scratch on a week night because it is ‘fun’. Regardless – I’m loving it.

So far I’ve also experimented with jarred foods. All together you have eaten: rice cereal (with breastmilk), pears, sweet potatoes, carrots, prunes and oatmeal. Oh – and bananas which you HATED. You gagged and spit it out and looked at me if I’d just feed you rotten eggs. I didn’t take it personally seeing as it was only when I was pregnant did I take to really liking them myself.

Although, I must admit I was worried about feeding you certain foods because of my family history with food allergies. When I was a baby my mother said I was allergic to tomatoes and had an intolerance to dairy, wheat and peanut butter. When my younger sister was born though she was allergic to tons of things: dairy/eggs, goats milk, wheat, corn syrup (found in most soy products at the time), corn, nuts, citrus. Her allergies were so severe that when I kissed her cheek after eating a milk product she would break out in tons of hives. Or when we cut a piece of cheese using one knife we then had to put it in the sink immediately so as not to use the same knife to cut something my sister might eat or her throat would close and she would have trouble breathing. To this day I still pause when I’m cutting something in my kitchen that she was allergic to tempted to change knives immediately.

I give my mother tons of credit for dealing as well as she did with food allergies and her baby back then in the 80′s. There were not things such as Whole Foods and giant aisles of most grocery stores packed with food alternatives for people with food allergies much less kids with them. My mother used to order wholesale shipments of rice bread from Seattle and store the loaves in various friends freezers in the neighborhood. She found clever ways to give my sister the closest possible version of what other kids were eating at the time – popcorn (toasted rice cakes crumpled with soy butter), ice cream (frozen pear juice pops), etc. Not only that but she constantly had to deal with comments from tons and tons of people wherever she went telling her to ‘relax’ and stop being ‘so uptight’ – just give the kid some ice cream. Sure ok. Then do you plan to be with our family in the ER at 3AM when her throat closes? Because that is where you would find us often.

Mom befriend a Vietnamese friend in the next town over. The woman taught her how to make rice noodles and delicious and clever things my sister could have. And soon our normal cupboards full of typical American foods such as Ritz crackers were replaced by seaweed crackers, butter was replaced by soy butter, peanuts replaced with soy nuts, etc. I remember high school friends after school would stop off at different kids houses on a rotating basis to empty the fridge and cupboards full of junk food. Lets just say our house was never on the list.

I’m thankful for eating as well as I did back then. And now that I’m a mother myself I am even more inspired by the clever ways my mother tackled food back then – to feed her kid.