John Stewart Says, "Eat Quinoa"

Up until the day before we shot this video (6/24) Eliza had eaten puree of a variety of fruits and vegetables. They all shared one commonality: the consistency of, well, baby food. Making her food amounted to (sometimes) peeling, chopping, steaming and using the handy dandy immersion blender that The Other Chapins gave us for Christmas last year. As I used the blender I might hear in the background the suggestion that Eliza "could use a little more texture."

This video is Eliza's first foray into the world of textured food. Quinoa. Delicious, nutritious quinoa. Doesn't every family feed their child a South American pseudocereal (thanks, Wikipedia!) as one of her first foods? We thought so!

Dining al fresco

We doubt that Eliza really has a preference as to where she takes her meals. Who knows, though, maybe she appreciates the view while she eats her puree of cauliflower. Either way, here's a short video of Eliza noshing on some of that aforementioned cauliflower. Or was it parsnips? It really doesn't matter; she's eaten everything we've put in front of her, including some bits of paper plate when we weren't paying close enough attention.

Mornings

Don't call her a cat person, but Eliza loves Bella.

For the FB viewers, check out a new video at housechapin.blogspot.com.

If only she were happier

This is how our evenings have been lately.

If you're reading this on Facebook, head on over to housechapin.blogspot.com. There's a video.

First Rice Cereal And Now THIS?

You're feeding me what?

I guess when we stop and think about it, avocado is kind of a weird first food. We sort of both independently thought about it, and when we suggested it to each other, naturally we thought it was a capital idea. As an added bonus, you don't have to do anything to it other than mash it with a fork to get it ready to feed to a 6 month old. As a second added bonus (this is where you can make up your own Goldman-Sachs joke), we happen to love avocado and will happily eat any of the leftovers that Eliza chooses to kick down to us. I don't think this will be true with, say, puree of pea.

Further, avocados have a ton of good fat, potassium, a couple of those B vitamins with the numbers after them, vitamin E, vitamin K, and, also important: fiber.

She seemed pretty excited to be eating - which is not unusual. She didn't seem to recognize the difference in color from her usual dinner of oatmeal to this bright green paste and took her bites quite readily. The end result: she finished an entire half of an avocado in about 10 minutes (a good part of which ended up on her face/bib/floor). She would, intermittently, seem to shudder as if surprised by what she was eating. Which makes sense, seeing as how everything she's eaten until this point had been devoid of texture and, mostly, taste. Round 2 vs. the avocado is tomorrow. Maybe a video (horizontally shot) is in order?

Hmmm...interesting.

Hey! Not too bad!

Your avocado. Give it to me.

We Are Hilarious

Yep, we are hilarious. Obviously. This isn't news to anyone. Except Eliza. She's just discovering that her parents are the second coming of George Carlin (but without those "seven words" - at least, not in Eliza's presence. No, no, never). Forgive us if we're still getting the video thing down and you have to kind of tilt your head for the first half of the clip. You might also notice we're still using the point-and-shoot for video purposes. So we suspect when Eliza is all grown up and all she has is standard definition video of most of her infant life she'll assuredly think we didn't love her enough to invest in an HD camera. Anyway, enough with the words. People want to see videos.

Oh, and if you're reading this on Facebook, well, you'll just have to trudge on over to housechapin.blogspot.com to see the video. Apparently they haven't figured out how to import clips from blogs to Bookface.

Weebles wobble...

...and they DO fall down. Here's Eliza working on her latest trick: sitting.

Don't adjust your screens, but do plan to turn your head to the side for the next minute.