Hope Muscles In On Our Territory

I’ve mentioned before that the Civee and I really like artichokes.  Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to have to learn how to share.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been feeding Hope food (real food) as we take our sup (special thanks to my over-the-shoulder editor for that word choice).  Hope started out with rice cereal and oat cereal.  We added a vegetable to the oat cereal, starting with peas, then moving on to avocado, and last week, squash.

Each day, Hope’s eating skills grew–where the first few days, it seemed as if she ended up wearing more of her food than she ate, pretty soon, she was getting most of it in her mouth.  And it also seemed as if she enjoyed each food progressively more.  When we started the squash, we really got the feeling that she enjoyed her food- possibly for the first time getting more out of the vegetable than the oat cereal.

So The Civee and I decided to start her on one of our favorite vegetables- an artichoke.  While I stuffed and baked an artichoke for the Civee and I, I steamed some artichoke hearts and pureed them for Hope.  We gave them to her along with some squash, totally bypassing the oat cereal for the first time.

Unfortunately (for us), Hope really enjoyed the artichokes.  And I don’t think we’ll be able to keep them from her for much longer.  As I’ve mentioned before, she’s crawling all over the house making us put our childproofing plans into place a lot sooner than we expected.  Not only is she crawling now, but she’s also starting to pull herself up to things.  Yesterday, I saw her crawl up to a toy basket and pull herself up, curious to see what was inside.

She’s strong, she’s coordinated and she’s smart.  It’s going to be tough to hide artichokes (or anything else) from her.