Day 2 – Breakfast

Malina sometimes wakes up before my silent alarm on my watch. When she does this she sometimes tries to be quiet. I hear her moving and cooing in her crib. Scratching at the elephants and whales on her bedding or smacking at the space between the bars.

Because my vision without my glasses is limited to only a few feet of clarity of detail, I will sometimes reach for my cellphone and check the video monitor. I watch her do these things and as she occasionally looks over to where we are sleeping. If only she did that when she woke up at night or even all the time. She just as often wakes me with cries and screams. She is still adorable either way, but I am biased and sure most parents feel that way about their baby especially when they are being good.

So we went through our morning routine and feeding before going out to the kitchen to make her second breakfast. I had my pan with water and a steamer basket ready on the stove, so I turned on the burner and went to grab the asparagus I’d cut up the night before from the fridge.

See, I learned from the mistakes of yesterday and have actually accomplished some meal prep for the first time in months 😛 it probably saved me at least 10 minutes, but that’s still a win.

Once the asparagus was in the basket I put the lid on and forgot about it for 15 minutes as I went on to the main ingredient. Eggs.

Yes we are doing eggs again, but we’re frying them because it’s important to offer different textures. Plus, everyone has a favorite way to eat eggs. Malina is still figuring that part out and probably will for a long time.

Anecdote time – Personally, I loved fried eggs as a kid, poached as a teen, and Benedict when I was in college and started living on my own. All three are still good eggs to me, but a nice soft boiled egg is my favorite now a days. The egg thing reminds me of that scene in Runaway Bride, a Julia Roberts and Richard Gere movie from the late 90’s. Yeah, I watched a lot of those types of romances back then, and Richard Gere was a favorite actor of mine. Still is if we’re being honest. But in the movie Julia’s character gets accused of saying her favorite eggs are always the same as the fiancés, and she ends up with quite a few of those. This accusation however makes her go and try a bunch of different eggs all at once just to find her actual favorite. Cue egg montage.

Anyways, the character comes to the conclusion that eggs Benedict are her favorite (good choice in my opinion). It was a very eye opening scene for me though. The original message the character offered was she changed her mind over time (cool, I get that) but then the message is challenged as being a follower and not having a mind of her own, a kind of toxic codependency (holy moly did that expand my mind as a young girl). It was because of this movie that I spent a year trying different eggs, much to my parents chagrin, but I found a new favorite outside of the normal and stuck with it for a long time. The hidden message under the eggs however is you don’t have to like what the people around you like or whatever makes it easier, and that is sometimes the harder thing to remember. Okay, we’re going back to Malina and away from 90’s nostalgia.

So fried eggs. Nothing is better than frying an egg in butter. If this wasn’t for Malina I’d use salted butter, but we’re limiting/omitting salt. So sweet butter it is. She can’t have runny yolk either, so I cook it extra long on low heat before flipping it to cook the other side (this hurt me in ways only fellow runny yolk lovers can understand). When done, I cut her eggs into pieces, plated up the asparagus with a pinch of salt, and pulled the quartered grapes out of the fridge.

Malina was eager when she saw her plate, honestly that made me so happy with how yesterday went, and I was so excited for her I forgot to take a picture of her plate before she dove into it. Going straight for the eggs again.

So because of how fried eggs are shaped, she got to try the egg white and yolk separately. Malina was not a fan of the yolk but she liked the egg whites and ended up eating a good amount of it.

Next, we moved the asparagus closer to her by flipping the plate around and let her go for it. She snatched up a spear easy enough and proceeded to shove it in her mouth. Much to my surprise, she really liked it. She chewed and sucked on the asparagus spears one after another, leaving behind the fibrous outsides.

The grapes were a different story. I knew she’d have a hard time with them, but practice and exposure will make her better at doing it. Plus I gave her a lot of grapes, so she was able to grab them and toss them around. In the end, she was more interested in my bowl of grapes and helped herself to the collection of juice at the bottom of the bowl and one small slice of grape from it.

I was so proud of her today. She ate well and only gaged once during her meal, which was an impressively upset face.

She also has gotten a lot better with positioning her sippy cup of water and needs our help with it less and less too. Probably because she finds herself reaching for it often now that there is food involved. Especially foods she doesn’t like or care for.

I call breakfast for day two a success. Malina liked the eggs better, enjoyed her asparagus, and kinda tried grapes. There was also still no sign of a reaction so we are probably good with the eggs, though we’ll keep an eye on it until she’s eaten them for the entire week.

My husband wanted me to add that we take so many pictures while she eats and get way more bad ones an good. That I also do help Malina with her foods and placements more than BLW suggests, but I can’t help myself. I want Malina to be able to pick her food up and that is easier when it is on the plate and not on her shoulder or under her chin (two common places now).

At the end of the day, I’m going to do what I feel is best while still trying to adhere to the ‘rules’ but I trust myself. And now day 2 is done and day 3 looms, but there are more successes now and my confidence is at a high point going on from here. It can only get easier, right?

So, as always, remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!

-Erica