Pleiades Bee

The boys, suddenly, love solid food. Seemingly overnight they’ve transitioned to it, no longer gagging, no longer choking. Perhaps they’ve decided they’ve frightened me with their inability-to-breath-face-turning-odd-shades-of-color antics enough. And, as usual, the immense amount of worry that has bounced around my brain (Why are they 11 months old and not able to handle a Puff? Are they getting enough nutrition with just pureed food and breast milk? What if they choke and I can’t get the choke-inducing bit of food out? How are they possibly going to handle birthday cake in a month?) was for nothing.

While they both have a fairly good pincer grasp, we still find it best to put bits of food in their mouths so that most of it doesn’t end on the floor (which is the same thing as Tucker’s mouth). So although still a little hazy I can begin to picture a time when the boys will pick at food on their trays while we eat our own meals, no longer combining the two.

I look at their small bodies and consider the amount of food they consume—it’s a lot. Yesterday they each had a peach yogurt cup, a 1/4 of an avocado, a 1/4 of a banana, peas and crumbled goat cheese in addition to 6-1/2 oz. bottles every three hours. As I type this on a rainy Tuesday morning they’re fast on their way to eating a 1/2 banana each for breakfast—only a half hour after downing their first-thing bottles.

This is wonderful, because they need to grow.

And terrifying, because someday, they’re going to be teenagers.

“When the boy is growing he has a wolf in his belly.” —German proverb