Painfully Healthy

I have been making Emily's babyfood for awhile now, but recently I have been slacking. I made a bunch of food this summer, when everything was ripe and cheap and it was easy to find locally-grown food. But as we ran out of our frozen "food cubes" from summer's bounty, I have found myself turning more and more to jarred babyfood instead of making more up myself.

So yesterday, I sat down with my copy of Super Baby Food (the making your own babyfood bible) and studied up. I have been introducing all sorts of foods to Emily 4 days at a time (to make sure there's no allergic reaction) and I try to vary the type of food I give her each day, but I hadn't given much thought to the overall nutritional balance. As it turns out, this is what I should be giving her for breakfast:

"Super Porridge" (made from organic grains ground at home in a blender and cooked into porridge)
A sprinkle of powdered kelp and a dash of nutritional brewer's yeast
1 mashed egg yolk every other day, and 1 vitamin A food cube on the other days (like carrots, sweet potatoes, etc.)
2 green food cubes (broccoli, kale, spinach etc.)
1 Vitamin C food cube, or 2-4 oz of freshly juiced fruit, diluted 1:1 with water
Vitamin drops with iron

Wow. My daughter was clearly missing out.

So yesterday I went to the Common Market and bought powdered kelp and some fruit for juicing. I had already introduced Emily to everything else, so I was good to go this morning.

I defrosted her food cubes. I juiced an apple. I sprinkled kelp and brewer's yeast. I placed all her various food containers within arms reach (mine but not hers) and settled down to feed her breakfast.

Lo and behold, she ate it! And she liked it! I was delighted that my daughter was taking so well to such nutritious food. If I just keep feeding her this way when she's little and doesn't know any better, she'll still eat healthy food when she gets older! I told myself that even so, I wouldn't be one of those mothers who forced their children to take unidentifiable health foods to school in their lunchboxes. I would still be a "cool" mom. Not lunchables cool, but I would be clever and sneak healthfoods into normal-looking sandwiches and such. But hey, at this rate maybe Emily would ASK if she could have some kelp to take for lunch (and she would remember to say please, because this was my fantasy).

I topped it all off with a dropperful of her Poly-Vi-Sol vitamins (which she also takes willingly...am I a lucky mom or what?), which she must've swallowed a bit wrong because she started to cough.

And cough.

And cough.

And then she vomited up every last nutrient in a spectacular greenish fountain.

I guess she'll just have to be dangerously low on Vitamin A until we try again at breakfast tomorrow. And I'll give her the vitamins first next time :-(

-Sara