Return of ANTILOP

Violet has gained sitting prowess in the past month or so, becoming a veritable sitting EXPERT, and we have replaced the bouncy seat in the kitchen where she curled while I puttered about chopping vegetables or sizzling onions in olive oil with a high chair. Now we can strew bits of finger food in front of her to try to keep her occupied while I cook and pull her up to the table with all of us while we eat dinner-- so convenient! It's like she's a little person or something!

This is actually the second of this exact same model of high chair that we have purchased, as it was the high chair we used with Grace in Connecticut. The first one did not make the cut of being moved across the country and got donated to a crisis pregnancy center or something (a great way to get rid of outgrown baby stuff, if your politics allow it). Do you remember that? When we got rid of a bunch of stuff because the cost of replacing it was less than the cost of another moving container? Ah, moving... And now we have indeed spent $25 to get another one. I am inordinately fond of this high chair, actually, as it is so trim and small and white and does not have any padding or crevices for bits of food to get caught in. It comes in red now, too, which is super cute, and I was almost persuaded away from my purported minimalist clean white aesthetic by its bright cheeriness.

Violet is eating a lot better now at 8 months than she has been. Every time we feed her, she will eat a good half-dozen brimming spoonfuls before turning her little head and sealing her little lips and batting away the spoon. This is a huge step forward but I still get astonished by how little she eats at a time. I have to work hard to remind myself about babies' tiny stomachs-- about the size of their fists, right? One effect of exclusive breastfeeding is that I have only the vaguest notion as to how much volume she normally eats at one feeding and thus don't really have anything to compare to.

Anyway, the other thing that still astonishes me is the GIGANTIC MESS every feeding makes. I am still stripping her down to her diaper and giving her a bath afterwards at every feeding. Any efforts I make to minimize the mess seem to result in Violet not actually eating; if she's going to eat, she wants to hold the spoon with me and smear it in her hair and all over her body and somehow manage to fling it across the kitchen. They don't make a bib that will address this level of mess. And because of THAT, I am still only feeding her once a day. Is that bad? Probably, right? I somehow have in my head that I plan to feed babies once a day for a month, twice a day for a month, and then up to three meals a day. I am waaaaaaay off track on that one, though; I really must take a deep breath and work up some steely-eyed resolved and go to two feedings a day. And as a consolation for all the mess, it is awfully cute, yes?