Angie took the red pill:
She started reading the Super Baby Food book and she decided that we will be making all of Kate’s food ourselves.
I was lazy and didn’t read the book but the basic principle was that you want lots of colors in the food you give your baby. There are about 20 super foods like blueberries, leafy greens.
In the beginning we would buy batches of apples, yams, spinach, ( I don’t remember all the details now). She would cut them up into little pieces mostly with the skin on and steam them in a large pan until they are very soft. Then Angie would take a chinois/strainer with a grinding handle and grind the apples into apple sauce, the spinach into spinach mush. We might need to strain it twice to get rid of any hard to digest fiber. Then she would put these little baby food into ice cube holders and freeze them.
The next time we need to feed Kate, Angie would take out ice cubes and defrost them. One day’s color palette would be orange carrots, green spinach and yellow apple.. (something like that, I never learned the system) Kate would actually have spinach cereal for breakfast. I know, hold your horses… To this day, I’m still unsure about that diet.. But it works. Kate’s favorite meals now is vegetables with whole wheat pasta, fruity olive oil . She chows down on berries, yogurt. She did discover chocolates and ice cream recently, but as long as she gets her daily vegetables, we are ok with her having some sweets.
The decisions in Angie’s food choices for Kate did come at a price, but we have no regrets. Angie is a bit burned out with parenting and she misses adult interaction. Luckily she will be teaching this coming fall semester . There were many frowns about how extreme it was. Kate didn’t get any seasoning in her food, no candy, no sweeten yogurt until she was 4. Spinach for breakfast got the grandparents up in arms in protests. Not having simple carbs like white rice didn’t go well with our traditional Chinese parents. Kate didn’t get processed foods until she went to school at 3 1/2 when she held on to a fish cracker and didn’t think it was real food. Now she does like her crackers and cookies but still very under control
Angie and I made some very extreme choices in our parenting journey. We were first time parents and we learned along the way. The one principle that we learned which has helped us is that it’s better to do the hard work early on and we can also ease up later. Rather than asking the child to do the hard work later in life. An example would be not introducing vegetables to a baby and asking the child at 4 or 5 to start eating leafy greens. It’s so much harder at that point.
I wish new parents are given more education in raising children. Maybe a mandatory class in college or right before you have a child, you are require to take a Parenting 101 class. We’ve made many mistakes in our parenting, but also stumbled across many good ideas. I wish 5,000 years of parenting wisdom could have been passed down a little easier and made easier to find.
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