Ladies Lunching

Honey Bunny's presence in my house is prompting many changes in our lifestyle. She's neither an early riser nor a cranky sleeper.  Her father was both.  She takes scheduled naps (whatever happened to never wake a sleeping baby?) and wakes up smiling and happy to see whoever bends over the Pack 'N Play to extricate her.  

She's supposed to get a certain amount of calories from a certain amount of breast milk each and every day.  There is a vast supply - newly pumped and frozen.  The frozen is taking over our freezers.

Her father and their Audi transported a cooler full of already frozen milk; the colorful bags fill the garage fridge's freezer. The oldest bags are defrosted and used as new bags are pumped and added.  It's a system which includes a never ending cycle of reorganizing and redistributing the food which formerly lived in the cccccold.  

I don't have much to do with the process.  I watch in awe.  

My only resonsibility is to get the milk into her mouth. I feed her a bottle with powdered allergens after her first nap.  I always have a defrosted bottle close at hand once she's up and out and about.  She's very clear about wanting and not wanting the bottle; her snarfle face and the juicy raspberry which follows lets us know in no uncertain terms that, as her Daddy says, I have an itch on my foot and you are giving me a bottle?????

There are no jars of baby food.  There's a steamer to soften green beans, but no pureeing of anything.  Instead, she sits in her high chair at the table, gnawing on what the app (of course there's an app for that) judges to be appropriate for her age and toothlessness.  

What's approved?  The ribs not the leaves of lettuce, cut in long strips so she can hold and gum the piece without losing control. Last night, the red marks around her pretty mouth were not signs of allergy.  She bruised her tender skin with a chicken drumstick, beating herself in the face while trying to insert the thick end into her maw.  

It's fun to watch.  It also makes going out for a ladies' lunch very easy.

We took a nice long walk to Pappoule's, navigating the user-unfriendly lack of walking paths down from the street to the mall with aplomb if not dignity.  We spent a few minutes being admired by the owner, a woman we've known since we moved to town.  We spent a lot more time being admired by the other patrons, all but one table of whom were grandparent-eligible nd eager to know her details.

Taking an outdoor table so Honey Bunny could enjoy the trees, we continued to be a source of amusement to passersby.... one of whom, an old friend of Grandma's, took that picture (if I ever take a great picture I'll be sure to include my face).  The ladies at the next table engaged us in a spirited conversation about our daughters-in-law and their new fangled ideas - all of which were fine and wonderful if totally different from how we raised and fed our own kids.  

We couldn't just walk out when we finished our meal (I had salad, she had lettuce ribs and a hunk of chicken to suck on).  All the patrons on the patio requested a drive by.  We were happy to oblige.

It was such a success that we're going out to breakfast this morning, leaving as soon as Queen T creates strips of egg to bring along.  Apparently, scrambled eggs are a disastrophe in the making when you're nearly eight months old.