Eating habits

My 1-year-old won't eat anything but jarred food, yogurt, cheerios, and mum mums. Suggestions welcome.

I've gotta say: we took the "difficult" or "wholesome" road by nursing (I am still nursing her twice a day). I nursed her while holding down a crazy work life. There were many opportunities to quit, but I have persevered. Yay for us in that regard.

But.

We really lazied it up (is that a phrase?) on the food part of things. Because of life demands, we opted to skip out on making home made baby food. Instead, we've given her packaged and jarred foods according to the various stages listed on the labels.

You will notice that the baby food manufacturers stop listing the appropriate age for eating after 9 months (the chunkiest jarred foods say 9+ months). That means they assume, after introducing these foods at 9 months, you would begin to give them "real food." What does that mean, you ask? It means cutting up pieces of your meal in smaller sizes, basically.

We weren't really proactive about giving her "real food" when she first cut teeth, and then I got sick twice in May. Then I kind of stopped thinking about it for a few weeks, and kept on with the baby food. Now she's one (and a week), and REFUSES to eat real food. Plus, she's beginning to get picky about which baby food varieties she likes.

To be frank with you, it's getting annoying and expensive.

I can't put the blame on her because I know we have not set her up well to receive this "real food," but isn't it an inherent human condition to enjoy food??? Why, when I give her cheeses, meats, breads and pastas, does she throw them off her tray as if they were radioactive?

Part of my thang has been an unwillingness to let her get dirty. I think she has picked up on this and also does not like to touch any food that seems messy or slimy. I know, I'm clearly out of touch. So I'll acknowledge this and move on.

ToDaY I was really frustrated and didn't know what to do. So at lunch in a moment of loss, I poured out the jar contents into a plastic bowl, gave her a spoon and said, "Have at it." Not only did she attempt to eat the food with the spoon, but for the first time, she was touching the slimy stuff...willingly. The feeding wasn't perfect as she was complain-y for unknown reasons and I ended up feeding the food her after a while. But I was a little surprised.

Is there any wisdom you can give me on how to break her of this?

1 Year Ago

One year ago my beautiful little girl was born.

Today we had a party in her honor. It felt so good to have a day just devoted to her. Pictures are posted on my facebook page. I just might get around to posting them here too.

9 Years Ago

On this date in 2001, if you had told me I had 9 years to live, that I would move to Chicago and then Boston, get two degrees, marry an amazing man, buy a house and give birth to a daughter, I would have thought that to be a pretty darn good deal.

On this date in 2001, I had my whole life ahead of me. And so did all my peers. We had just graduated from high school one month before.

On tomorrow's date in 2001, I got a phone call around 9AM. It was Karen FitzPatrick's father, John. He identified himself then said, "Have you heard?" Silence ensued. I knew by the tone of his voice what he was going to say. He explained that Karen had been dispatched to fight a small brush fire that got out of control. It had claimed her life and three others.

Karen died on this date in 2001.

I felt stupid. I had received a postcard from her about a month beforehand,

and saw her two weeks prior ("We've GOT to hang out," we both said) at the Warehouse Theater parking lot. She was leaving church and I was going to rehearsal. But I didn't even know she had gone into firefighting. Some friend.

I don't really remember what happened next. I know I called my mom, think I called my sister, called Lacy. Later that day Mr. Rees, Erik, Jeremy and I were all going to visit Mrs. Yergen in the hospital post-surgery. When arriving solo at the hospital, I could immediately tell they did not know and the burden of sending the message was on me. It was so incredibly hard, one of the harder things I'd had to do up to then. We chose not to tell Mrs. Yergen. After that Cheryl came over to my house and we talked through our disbelief. That night we had rehearsal for whatever show we were doing at the Warehouse Theater. I couldn't control my sobbing while I played.

The following days are a blur. We held the memorial at Stone Church, and Cheryl & I did the music. I'll never forget the version of "I'll Fly Away" we did. Lacy & I sat next to each other and one's sobs would spur on the other's. The memorial for all four firefighters was at the Sundome. The procession was miles long. Civic employees from all over were in attendance.

Our parents must have felt so helpless during this time.

Grief is a strange thing. I will never quite understand. You can't measure it. You can't anticipate it's depth. You can't simulate it. You don't know when it will pop up again. It's just grief.

Her death was the first impactful one in my life. I am so glad she trusted in the Lord and that her lifesong still proclaims His glory.

9 years ago I lost one of my best friends. I've had 9 more years than her. And in spite of all that has happened in these 9 years, I still feel as though I've got my whole life in front of me. I don't know if there will ever come a time when I can say "I've lived long enough." That's what makes death so hard sometimes.

I think, if she were still here, she would have had three kids by now. It's fun to imagine her being a mom, just for a moment.

I'm fine. Today I'm thinking about who she was, who she was to me, what happened, and what has happened since. Nobody in my present life knows of my loss from 9 years ago. Except a few friends and family who live thousands of miles away. It's a very strange reality to reconcile.

Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred minutes.

How do you measure a year in the life?

(Or in this case, four-million-seven-hundred-thirty-thousand-four-hundred)