A productive day

Yesterday I had a lot to do. Christmas with all its accompanying labor is looming close. I had cookies to bake, parties to plan, Christmas letters to write and presents to make, the house to clean, and all the props and stage design for the Christmas play to worry about.

Yesterday D1 also continued her six-month growth spurt in earnest. She's been eating extra for about a week, and yesterday she seemed to want to do nothing else. I was tired because of the activities of the weekend and from trying to keep up with her eating. Seems like I just recovered from the four-month growth spurt. So I finally gave up, left the house a mess and the cookie dough in the fridge, and went and laid down with her for the afternoon. She ate for well over an hour without interruption, then played and dozed awhile, then ate again. I napped.

It was a productive day. I spent it providing my baby with the best nourishment she could get, and ensuring we can keep that up for several more months. Fifty years from now, D1 will still be enjoying better health because I decided to let the cookie dough fossilize. And by then I should have plenty of time to bake cookies to sabotage it.

There was a "Baby Blues" cartoon a year or so back in which Darryl comes home and finds Wanda with her feet propped up. "So, what'd you do today?" he asks. "Oh, nothing much," she says, "Just made a few billion cells in the tiny human being I'm growing inside my uterus--what did you do today?" "Hey!" he says, "Just because I'm not creating life doesn't mean my work isn't valuable!" Well as I know it, it's hard to remember sometimes which of the things I do are really the important ones.

I did decide to bow to the inevitable and break out the applesauce. This morning we added a little oatmeal gruel to the mix. She makes horrible faces and most of it comes back out on her bib, but I think there's a little less on the bib than was in the bowl, so perhaps some goes down. She keeps opening her mouth for more, though, so I don't think she hates it.