Tucking in like a champ

The most exciting thing that's been going on this week is undoubtedly starting Emily on proper food. I'm enjoying feeding her so much more than I did with Isabel, for a number of reasons:

1. I'm not nervous this time round. Child #1 is a good eater therefore the chances are Child #2 will be as well. And the first one now eats a good range of food, so we must have done something right last time!
2. Emily's's going great guns, and gulping down as much food as I'll give her. I'm being cautious since I don't want her little digestive system to explode, but we're already on three (small!) meals a day and we only started seven days ago.
3. She looks like she's really enjoying it, and it's always a pleasure to feed someone who's clearly relishing what they're eating.

I'm sure there will be some foods we'll come across that she won't like. Thus far we've only had pears, carrot, baby rice and creamy porridge. She's loved it all, barring the baby rice, which she tolerated but didn't look very enthusiastic about. Hardly surprising really, since it does taste like cardboard. Having said that, I mixed baby rice in with the pears this evening, to give it a bit of bulk, and that went down a treat.

It's so interesting watching her learn how to eat - I was too concerned with getting the food into Isabel to be able to really pay attention to how her eating developed. At first Emily didn't realise she needed to open her mouth quite wide, and tried to treat the spoon as a teat - she seemed to think that if she sucked the spoon more food would magically appear. However, now she's opening her mouth and sitting up straighter which is a relief - during meal 1 she plunged her face into the bowl in an effort to get the food in quicker! I guess that when they're only on milk they're used to a continuous stream of food, and having gaps in supply when they move on to solid food comes as a nasty shock!

Later this week she has the excitement of parsnip and then apple, and maybe even, if she's very good, butternut squash. Doesn't get much better than that - but I am going to make a resolution, in case things go wrong as we progress, which I am determined to stick to. And it's this: "I'm not going to take it personally when she spits lovingly-prepared food back in my face. This is not a sign that she doesn't love me. She's saying she doesn't like spinach, or whetever it is, not that she rejects me as a mother!". Now that I've written it down that looks silly - but I took it so personally when Isabel wouldn't eat what I'd cooked. I'm happy to spare myself the angst this time!