One of our parenting guidebooks says babies should start trying out solid foods when they double their birth weight. We think Emilio is a little bit shy of that milestone (we'll know for sure when we go go in for a check-up Wednesday), but since another of our books says you shouldn't wait until after your baby is six months old, we decided to give Emilio a taste of organic rice cereal on Wednesday. It went about as well as could be expected. He didn't eat much at first, but that's normal. We'll keep giving him a little bit everyday and increase the portions incrementally. It's quite a challenge to hold and feed him, so we may have to buy a high chair soon.The weather has started getting better here and it's also lighter later, so we've been going on walks. Yesterday, when I came home from work, I got off the El a couple of stations early, at the Lawrence stop, and met Mari and Emilio at the Borders bookstore there.
Mari bought a book that her book club will be reading soon (When the Emperor was Divine, by Julie Otsuka), and I bought the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winner for fiction, March, by Geraldine Brooks, which imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. As you can see in the photo at left, Emilio wore the people-stomping shoes that los abuelos brought him from Spain.After we got back from Borders, we headed up to the Oops store on Clark. We intended to send María Rosa the flash drive she left here, but once we got there, we decided that for safety's sake we first ought to copy the data to Mari's laptop.
We got a chance to talk to our favorite Oops store employee, who is pregnant and expecting a child at the end of June. She hadn't seen Emilio in a bought a month and said she was really impressed by how much he has changed. She told Mari that she would like to join Mari and Emilio for a neighborhood stroll some day. No doubt Mari will take her up on that offer soon.While Emilio and I are at home alone together, he sits calmly for long stretches while I tap away on my laptop. Sometimes toys are involved. Sometimes not. As I've been working on this blog entry, Emilio has been gnawing on a chilled teething ring. After he tired of that, he became absorbed in thought. One of his favorite genuflection positions is with right leg fully extended and toes firmly grasped by right hand, as illustrated in the photo at right. I tried this same position myself last night, but couldn't quite pull it off.
When I get the sense that things have grown a little too studious, I sometimes try to lighten the mood by telling jokes. This past week I came up withone that just gets Emilio belly-laughing every time I tell it. The joke begins with me saying "E - mi -li -o" in a high-pitched, up-and-down singsong voice that some sports fans use to taunt the players on rival teams (as in "o-ver-ra-ted"). The punchline of my joke involves a transition to a chant in a lower voice register: "poo-poo poo-poo-poo." As you can see in the photo at right, though I've told Emilio this joke several times, it has not grown old yet. He breaks up every time I tell it.
If the humor of this joke doesn't strike you as uproarious, it's probably just a father-son thing.
7 comments:
I can't quite reach my toes as Emilio does either. The joke is quite funny and I laughed when I read it. You might try his rocker for feeding. Miss you. Love
Yes, I have been using his rocker and it works fine for now. I just hope all the stains of food come out of the rocker and his bib and his face and my face and the couch and......
I would like to call this game the "Emilio Game"
I did find it handy to have a high chair when feeding the boys solid food. That way, all of the food stains are concentrated in one area...ideally. We won't discuss the sweet potatoes of '98.
A high chair is a good idea. He could feel like he was eating when you all were. I'm sure he would enjoy that.
Mari and I don't eat together "at table" as much as we'd like (we don't eat together much at all, for that matter, except when we go out). One of the things I liked about family life in Spain, though, was that most families still ate together at the dinner table twice a day (the Spanish work day includes a two-hour lunch break). When Emilio gets older, I hope and expect that we'll make an effort to keep that tradition alive in our family.
I remember eating at table in our house growing up, but it seems we gradually grew away from that. Eating in the dining room on Valley Road seemed to be a special occasion thing more than a regular habit. Is that right? Any Bentons out there have any thoughts about our family's history of dining at table and how and when it became less common?
I fear that this post has passed out of the normal reading of many, but as for me, I don't remember eating at table except on special occasions. Maybe at all. Certainly not with any regularity.
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