Tales from the table (and a few other places)

First off, apologies for my long absence from the web. Things have been a little unusual around here! Tim's grandfather passed away a couple of weeks ago, not unexpectedly since he was over 100, but Tim went back to Arizona for the memorial service and brought his mom back here with him for a visit. So Esther and Grandma have been having fun together.

And now for Tales From the Table!

I think I've mentioned before that Esther likes to eat. Make that LOVES to eat! Since she's under doctor's orders to gain weight, I thought I'd count calories for a while and find out how much she was getting. Let's just say that I don't think weight gain is going to be difficult--or if it is, it will be because her genes tell her to be small, not because she's not eating enough. She averages 800-some calories a day (with wide variations), but on one noteworthy day my teeny-tiny baby girl consumed 1095 calories. 1095! That's more than half of what an ADULT female is supposed to be getting in a day! Admittedly, your typical adult female isn't growing and doesn't spend her day squirming, crawling throughout the house, and pulling up on anything that will support her weight (as well as a few things that can't), but still!


This is one of Esther's first attempts at finger foods, when she was still stuffing her fingers in her mouth along with the food.












"What do you think of my new goatee?"




























"I hear avocado facials are all the rage this year!"

Now that Esther has decided that the food supply isn't drying up anytime soon (at least, I'm guessing that's the reason), she's beginning to get pickier. She still eats a lot, but foods that she couldn't get enough of when I first served them to her now are greeted with a whine and pushed out of her mouth. She also requires variety: at any one meal I have to alternate feeding her different foods if I want her to eat very much of any one thing, and I can't serve her the same food too many days in a row or she'll start to turn her nose up at it. But she still likes trying new foods, and she still eats a sufficient quantity to keep her doctor happy, so I don't have anything to complain about. Actually, I think the pickiness is probably a sign that she has a normal and healthy relationship with food for her age, which is not a bad thing, annoying as it can be to have to throw away a half portion of something that she wolfed down last week. I'm sure she'll get even pickier as she continues her journey into toddlerhood!


This is what happens when lunchtime comes too close to naptime.













As for the self-feeding, she has expanded her repertoire considerably, but it is still limited to things she can convey to her mouth with her fingers. This is what happened when I let her have the last little bit of cottage cheese in a bowl:

"I can't believe my good fortune!"














Um, Esther, I don't think you're going to get much food off of that end...













Then there's Esther's tendency to eat things that are not food. One day Tim let her play with a thin cardboard insert that came in a package. When I noticed her mouthing it and went to take it away, part of it had been bitten off. But her mouth was empty. Apparently she had chewed and swallowed it. So, for the moment, paper is very much on the no-no list at our house.

Esther the hillbilly, chewing on a blade of grass at the park.












Judging a book by its flavor.