Nourishing the girl....

I think it would be safe to say that food/feeding/nutrition occupies much of my time these days...whether it be planning what to feed the girl, trying to get her to eat, worrying about all manners of food safety from the containers we store her food in to the utensils and cups she uses, trying to get her to eat, learning that BPA is found in the lining of virtually every canned good on the supermarket shelves whether organic or not, trying to get her to eat, talking with fellow Mama's about my concerns about her eating and having to weather their incredulous looks when faced with my very healthy looking chunk of a girl (of course all while trying to get her to eat).

This morning at breakfast when I was looking down at her multiple little dishes filled with delicious bits of food arranged in a way I was hoping would seem enticing to her...I thought it might be fun to have some photographic evidence of the hoops I jump through (most likely hoops I myself have engineered...but hey...they are hoops nonetheless). Lets start with breakfast:

Here we have a black quinoa porridge, steel cut oatmeal with maple syrup (usually this would have some yogurt and blueberries but we are trying no dairy just to add some fun to this whole ridiculous endeavor and she is just plain sick of blueberries), some strawberries from our Community Supported Agriculture box we get weekly (fancy way of saying local organic produce), and her little mug of water she insists on as it compliments the mug of coffee I'm always clutching. She actually did pretty well with this breakfast but didn't really catch on to how amazing those strawberries are. Mid morning we have a snack:

Applesauce...which I always forget to try to give her and one of the things she actually really ate with gusto today....go figure. Then lunch:

Here we have brown rice cooked down with beef stock (that Bert made from scratch) and peas, steamed carrots also from our box, and roasted chicken. Those carrots were unbelievably tasty and sweet...Rhea humored me with a "no thank you bite" but was pretty much unimpressed. Mid afternoon we had another snack:

Oranges from that glorious box (she ate these as if I hadn't given her anything else the whole day and actually picked up the bowl to drink the juice afterwards) and Cinnamon raisin Mochi also eaten with much enthusiasm. I resurrected some of her leftover lunch and to my great relief she ate quite a bit of chicken. Last but not least...Supper:

Here you can see some delicious beef, the carrots and quinoa brought back for a repeat performance (one of the theories in getting your baby to like a number of things is repeated exposure to those things) and her favorite...a pile of peas.

Now you might wonder what it is she is doing during all this food preparation time...well naturally she is right beside me "cooking" herself:

Sifting through her rice and meticulously sorting her dried beans into various containers. She is shirtless because today she insisted on full access to her belly button at all times so that nothing would impede her ability to master the word belly button which apparently can only be uttered while she is pointing to it with one of her hands.

So yes...food/feeding/nutrition and belly buttons. All in a days work.