Is it normal for a nine month old to eat more than an adult? Baby Bug has a huge appetite! She just shovels the food in. She keeps me hopping trying to think of new things to let her eat. My favorite foods are things that she can pick up with her fingers because this slows her down a bit. Pasta is great. So is buttered waffle and toast and really slippery pieces of banana. But the problem with letting her feed herself is that she just inhales the stuff. She has no teeth so I can’t really tell her to chew her bites but is it normal to gum it twice and then swallow? She worries me, this baby. I’m afraid I’m raising one of those hamburger swilling pigs from a Carl’s Jr. commercial. Her appetite is voracious!

She can eat a whole cup full of macaroni and cheese, some bits of leftover chicken, a fourth of cheese sandwich, two cubes of squash mixed with rice cereal, about a zillion sips of apple juice mixed with water and the crust off a slice of pizza! (Broken into baby pinky sized pieces of course).

Yet she has no appetite for anything pureed. Still. I can only get her to eat her homemade baby food squash by mixing it with plain yogurt. She loves yogurt. Good thing too because back during the great illness of 06 I wasn’t producing much milk and I was really worried that Baby Bug might not be getting her vitamins. But things are working again now.

But I didn’t really want to blog about food. That’s just the picture I had handy. I wanted to blog about how I didn’t listen to you all about taking it easy. I worked like a mad woman yesterday and cleaned my house from top to bottom. It felt so good. After letting things go haywire for three weeks straight it felt good to have a clean carpet again. The laundry is done (thanks to my mom), the groceries are bought and put away (also thanks to my mom), the beds are made, the bathroom is clean, the cat litter and cat food is vacuumed up off the carpet… all is well again. Sigh……

And I’m fine! I am! Really! I thought I might have pulled a stitch trying to put away a 20 pound bag of rice in the cupboard where the water heater is (I know! But I have no other place to stow it!!!) but I’m fine. Just a little twinge and it was gone. I lift Baby Bug all day long and sometimes I even hoist her onto my hip that is dangerously close to incision number four. But it’s fine! It barely hurts! Maybe I didn’t even have surgery. Maybe it was all a scam. Maybe they just cut some surface cuts on my skin and charged my insurance a whole whopping lot of money. Cause I don’t feel anything.

I’m thanking God and moving on. It’s good to be healthy again. For a time there I thought I might have to live the rest of my life with pain. It was something I had to consider. I have a friend who has had serious back surgery and pain is a daily thing for her. I am in awe of that. I couldn’t do it. I hate the thought of being dependent on medication just to get through. But this is how it really is for a lot of people. So if anything this whole ordeal has taught me to be thankful.

I’m thankful but not necessarily smart. I didn’t rest a bit. We even went to the park yesterday. I had to put Baby Bug in the sling for a few minutes too (on top of my stitches!!!) just so I could get the stroller out of the trunk without having to put her down on the cement to play with oil stains and broken glass. It was a tiny bit uncomfortable but not that bad.

I miss the sling. The stroller is great but I don’t get to see her moving her arms up and down when she gets excited. She’s way out there in front of me behind the massive collapsing shade thing. If I want to look at her I have to stop walking and walk around to the front of her. I loved the sling because she was close to me. Like my own personal little friend, listening to every word I said as we ambled down the street. My mom thinks I’m nuts that I like to harness a sack of potatoes to my chest and take a walk. But I do. It’s just easier. Maneuvering a stroller up and down curbs, in between people is kind of a pain. It just doesn’t fit everywhere. Also it’s a pain in the neck to push up a hill. I’m much better at hiking up hills with something strapped to me than I am pushing something that wants to roll back onto me.

So maybe I’ll have to look into some kind of back pack. Or maybe I just need to find less hilly places to walk.

Sigh… I know this is a boring post. I wish I could hire a babysitter so I could have more time to be witty. But I guess that’s not really a high priority on the list of things to budget for.

*I think I used that title before… but again, no time for wittiness…