Eat, eat, eat!

Every time we have gone to the doctor with Joshua over the past couple of months, he has told us that Joshua should eat more... and every time he has given this advice, I have wondered why Joshua never shows signs of hunger. For the most part, we have listened to him, always keeping in mind that while he is an educated pediatrician, he is also of the mentality that babies are always hungry and cold. By now you may be tired about reading about this, but I just had to add one more note about it. In talking with a friend, I realized the reason that the doctor keeps thinking we should feed Joshua more is because of the amount of weight babies are supposed to gain in their first year. This is probably old news for more experienced moms, but apparently babies are supposed to increase their weight by 2.5 times in the first year of life. That is fine for average-sized babies, but really? Is my one year-old supposed to weigh 25 pounds? That seems a bit excessive! (Besides, weight aside, look at that picture and tell me again that he looks hungry!)

Most of you probably know now that we started to give Joshua some rice cereal right at four months, so the next step was to add a little bit of breakfast. We also started to give him some vegetables to help him adjust to new flavors. Another thing this naive mom learned is to always check labels of baby food because guess what? The rice cereal we have been giving him has sugar in it!! I think this would be forbidden in America, but it is impossible to avoid here. Naturally, Joshua makes faces of disgust when Mommy tries to give him green beans when his other experiences with solid food have tasted like vanilla pudding!