Puree Heaven

Guess who is SIX months old today?  You know what that means…time to break out the blender!  This week’s yummy choices:

The obligatory ‘blackmail photo’ of the YUMMY recipient.

Yes I am a busy mum.  I have three children to wrangle and wrestle and deliver to many varied activities on time and intact. I have a business to run and a house to pretend to keep together and 95% of the time I don’t have a pair of helping hands.  BUT, I do love to make my own baby food.  Always have.  Feeling reflective here…do you ever stop and really think about how amazing motherhood is?  How amazing women are?  This question goes out to all the girls AND guys.  I think about how my own body has nourished this particular little human being.  Over the last 6 months he has grown from a scrawny wrinkly little red-faced 6-pound infant into a roly-poly bumbling and babbling baby on the verge of so many wonderful things.  On MY milk.  My body did this.  Nevermind the 9 months previous to his birth, that is nothing short of a miracle.  Now he sits on my lap telling me baby stories and blowing raspberries, attached to me only emotionally and ready to venture into the world of food.  And I am happy to guide him, prepare the food with my own hands and share the amazing things in the world, one taste at a time. 

In India there is a tradition to hold a rice ceremony for babies at 6 months. This is when the baby takes his first taste of solid food.  The whole family and community gathers and usually an uncle and aunt are chosen by the parents to give the baby his first spoonful of rice.  This milestone is celebrated.  Chances are food preparations have been going on for days prior to the ceremony.  There is no popping open a jar of over-cooked green beans.  Generally the baby is also presented with a tray of items to choose. A pudding, pen, book, money and grass.  Pudding means he will honor family above all else, pen means he will be expressive, book means he will be studious and smart, money means wealth and dirt or grass means he will work with the land.

I admire the tradition to mark this important life-sustaining milestone.  Sadly we don’t have family within 4000 miles of our home and we don’t hold a rice ceremony, but as I peel the carefully selected fruits and vegetables and steam and puree and offer tastes to my baby, I feel the ceremony in what I am offering him.  A continuation of what he has received from my own body…and one more step forward into the world.

Looking at these following photos, I think I will pat myself on the back for a job well done on baby number 3.