Can't remember who said that, but that comment stuck and I wholeheartedly agree. Hannah is approaching 6 months and the time has come to expose her palate to a whole new delicious world. Just when we have finally sorted out her sleeping and feeding patterns, it's time to complicate things all over again.
For those unfamiliar with our local lingo, "mum mum" means "food" in baby language, and needs to be spoken with a sing-song intonation. I assume it's a mutated Chinese dialect, but even Malays and Indians understand it, so who knows how it originated.
Recalling our initial difficulty coming to a compromise with Hannah's "routine", we anticipate a similar struggle establishing her on solids. Hannah's carers (Gong Gong and Po Po) not only come from a different generation, but also a differing cultural background. While feeding babies rice porridge is unheard of in Daddy's home country, it is the norm here. Similarly, our suggestions to offer her mashed avocado (supposedly one of the best first foods for babies) was greeted with "What's that?", which then became "but it's not tasty", accompanied by suspicious looks.
Big names like the American Association of Paediatrics and the La Leche League mean nothing to them, so quoting them as our source of reference (among others) was useless. It was only after a phonecall to a fellow grandparent that they became more receptive to our weaning programme. Thankfully, this particular grandmother is rather updated and does all that we plan to do - puree & freeze fruits and vegetables, grind up organic oats and brown rice, and yes, serve avocados.
So, in the coming months, we will be embarking on this journey together, all of us none the wiser. No doubt, once Hannah has been established on solids, Po Po will have the satisfaction of cooking up rice porridge with ikan bilis and hin choy, and whatever else we were fed as babies.
After all that fussing, Hannah probably wouldn't even care less what we offer her - she has taken after the Wylie and Teoh boys, all of whom never had a problem with their food!
Ah, the joys of having a cross-cultural baby -- whose culture do we follow?
4 comments:
yes weaning is so exciting, noth8ing gave me so much pleasure as whatching the girls enjoy good food. And nothing gives more more plesure now what to see her tuck in to alost anythingwith gusto and sit proper,y for a full meal. Some of my friends have children who are fussy eaters or wont sit for ameal an i think theis must be one of the most stressful things to deal with. THe gift of enjoying food, wonderful
I swear that you can feed them mush and they would still survive.
Seems that way doesn't it?
My mom tells me I was a superbly slow eater, taking so long to finish one meal that it was time for the next.
Thankfully Hannah is nothing like me. She's more like my brothers who enjoyed their food thoroughly.
Now, will she end up looking like them?
By the way, when is the best time to introduce durian?
Durian was actually one of the first solids that Ben got a taste of - and he liked it!
However now he's older, he's grown more sensible and runs away at the sight... err smell of it...
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