Sunday, March 06, 2005

Solid as a rice cereal!

My boy is an eater! Noah had his first taste of "solid" food this morning. Honestly one teaspoon of rice cereal and four teaspoons of breast milk can hardly be considered solids, but he's on his way. He has embarked on a lifelong romance with food. I really hope that he isn't a picky eater as a child. I want him to try different ethnic foods without the bat of an eye. He certainly doesn't seem finicky at the moment. He wasn't at all phased by the idea of eating cereal. I put it in his mouth and he ate it. Hooray! What a milestone. I was so excited for today that when I went grocery shopping last night I bought little bowls, a ton of little containers of baby food, and the rice cereal. I think I would like to make some of our baby food though. Maybe get a cookbook - though I believe it is as simple as boiling carrots and putting them in the blender with a bit of water. But I will find a way to make it more complicated.

The grocery store is really filled with the dregs of humanity after 9pm on a Friday night. It's just a handful of lonely losers. I bought the wrong kind of coffee because I was wierded out by a guy hanging by the rack staring at me with this look of "She must be lonely too" on his face. There were only two registers open and only one other person checking out when I was leaving. The check out girl was the slowest I have EVER encountered. She stopped ringing three times to negotiate soda purchases for herself and two friends. I think at the end she could tell I was a little peeved because she tried to make small talk. She asked if I had any interesting weekend plans. I said "I have a four month old baby at home, so not really. Mostly feeding, diapering and trying to sleep." Should I have told her I was going to a slamming rave?

I was thinking last night about how hard it is to recognize our parents as real people who have had adventures and troubles prior to our birth. I really want to make sure my children know who I was before I was "Mom." Ideally it would be great to write a memoir. I could start by talking about what I know of my parents and my early life and go all the way until Noah was conceived. Certainly how I handle things will be dictated by what age I would consider showing it to my kids. I mean I wouldn't discuss any questionable behavior with a seven year old, but I might with a seventeen year old. In fact I think the teen years is exactly when my kids will need help to think of me as a flawed human and not just an authoritarian. Will they believe my hair has been dyed most of the shades of the rainbow? That I went to the Village at 16 to see a rock band at CBGBs without my mother's knowledge? That I partied so much my freshman year of college that I worried I was an alcoholic? These are experiences that shaped me. And I feel like some day it will be important for my children to hear about them, so they really know me. I want to share my life with them as I hope they share their lives with me.

1 comment:

hazel said...

I often tell trent about what I was like as a kid in school so that he a) realizes that he's not the only one, and b) learns from my mistakes. like being a procrastinator, feeling like my friends didn't like me, worrying about how I look. he looks at me kind of blankly (he is a boy, after all, and shows little emotion) but then I see in his actions that he did hear me and that he appreciates it. so what I'm saying in a roundabout way is that noah will most likely be thrilled with any info you can give him on how you used to be a human being before you became an all-knowing deity known as MOM.