Tales from the Dinner Table

Okay, I know, I haven't updated in a while. In all honesty, it is largely due to a bit of laziness on my part. But, I received the message loud and clear from certain individuals that I have been slacking on my duties. So, a few tidbits...

Lily has had a limited culinary experience thus far, but all signs seem to indicate that she is not a picky eater (yet). She took to the rice cereal immediately, she wasn't sure about the avacodoes at first but she definitely warmed to them by the second serving, and she downed the bananas without a second thought. She has decided, however, that our help with feedings is neither desired nor warranted. Whenever we feed her, she grabs the spoon and shoves it into her mouth and continues to chomp on it until she's satisfied. If she could just figure out how the "reload" works, she would much prefer to do this eating thing sans mom and dad.

Lily has been rolling over and sitting up a lot lately, although she has not yet figured out how to get herself into a sitting position. I told Carl tonight that I think Terra is going to be the motivating factor in Lily's efforts in crawl. In my limited experience, it seems that babies start to crawl when there is a strong enough stimulus to make them want to move. In Lily's class, the oldest baby (8 months old) just started to officially crawl this week. Her motivation? Her parents decided to wean her off of her pacifier. So, the teachers had pacifiers out on the mat, and she wanted them so much that she crawled to them. It sounds a bit cruel, but she didn't seem to mind never getting the carrot at the end of the stick, and she is now very pleased with her newfound freedom.

In Lily's case, I definitely think that Terra is going to be her motivation to crawl. She absolutely adores Terra. She holds her hand out so that Terra can give her kisses, and Terra gladly obligies. But, she can only do this when I hold her so that she can reach Terra. I think that if I forced her to try to get to Terra on her own, there would be some initial frustration, but it wouldn't take long for her to figure out how to do it on her own steam.

Carl said that she actually made crawling motions tonight toward him, but kind of like the stationary bike rider, she found herself in exactly the same place that she started. I didn't witness it, but I'm taking Carl on his word, which isn't worth much tonight. I'll explain...

I came home tonight to find Carl cooking dinner. What a treat! It looked and smelled wonderful. There was chicken simmering in a Thai chile marinade, a four-cheese rice and vermicelli mix, and cooked spinach. As I'm looking over the fare, Carl says "I found this recipe on the internet, and I thought that I would try it out". Highly suspicious, since Carl has not ever in his life looked for a recipe in a cookbook, much less online. So I play into his little white lie: "Really, you found this recipe online, wow". Carl responds "Yeah, it called for this marinade that we had on hand so I thought that I would try it out." (He is a terrible liar by the way - nothing at at all is believable in his story or his tone.) So, I ask him point-blank, "Are you lying to me?". And he confesses immediately, "Yes, I didn't think that you would want to try something that I just made up so I used the internet thing to make it more credible." Little sly dog. The funny thing is that he really does have me pegged. Saying that he found the recipe on the internet did make me more intrigued and added to the appeal of the dinner for me. How well he knows me. Too bad, how well I know him too.