Snack Station Update: Making My Way in the World

My mama told Christine Auntie about my snack station. Here is Christine Auntie's "trip down memory lane" about Aumar and the snack station. This keeps being a better and better idea. Now, pretty much any time my mama wants to give me food, she puts it down on my snack station. My mama usually gives me some fruit, toasts me some toast and makes food while I munch and crunch around the house.

I feel so comfortable in my house. My mama was thinking about all the things she and my daddy have chosen to do with me: homebirth, babywearing, cloth diapering, cosleeping, elimination communication, signing, and baby led solids/weaning. Out of all of them, she thinks the Uma led solids are most constructive of our relationship, my independence and my development of self. Baby led solids means I am "allowed" and encouraged to eat whole food, real food, the food my parents eat. My mama doesn't mash up food for me. I explore the textures, colors, smells, shapes, sizes, temperature, and weight to better understand how to eat and what I need. My mama watches me closely and see what I do and how my body reacts to what I eat. For instance, she noticed when I was sick I started to eat a lot of oranges. When my teeth started acting up these last couple days, I have wanted the frozen apples that last month I despised. (Yup, I might get my first tooth on my lunar birthday tomorrow.) She has seen how I gag and cough up foods and spit out things I am not supposed to eat. I don't seem to be the kind to swallow any old thing off the floor, though it is not beyond me to have a little taste to see what the thing is about. My mama is convinced that independence in what and how much I eat helps me develop my skills and confidence and understanding about myself and my world.

The snack station is just the latest development in my overall independence around food, but actually connects to my mama's overall vision for my home environment and our relationship. She so misses the little baby I once was, but she watches and learns from me each day with awe in her eyes. She looks at me with such adoration and love. If she is willing to let me find my way and my self, slowly and with guiding hand, I feel ready to move into the world with confidence and assurance. I listen when she or my daddy say "no, no, noooo" in a rhyme I recognize. I know No means "hurt" might be in store for me if I keep doing what I am doing. This communication helps us build trust with one another. Learning to nourish myself is just one part of figuring out my life that I will need to do. She thinks this snack station will provide many opportunities for me to do that.

Of course, she is just counting her blessings each day because anything could change our equilibrium at any moment. Having read about the evolution of Aumar's snack station into reality of life with four children, she knows that all these rhythms and melodies and harmonies we have found will shift and be reinvented just as they have since birth, though perhaps on a much bigger scale. Right now, though, we are still going strong riding the waves of creating a new family. We are loving each other up, and I continue to love my life......despite the pain of the two teeth pushing the final millimeters out of my gums.