I do not like green eggs and ham

But a tasty green avocado (abacate, in Portuguese), on the other hand . . .

Mmmmmm, delicious and satisfying!

Most of our family-focused weekend revolved around the person in our household who only barely breaks the 2-foot-tall mark (although we did still go out to parties at friends' homes on both Friday and Saturday night.) And the highlight was starting her on solids. We are a couple weeks ahead of the 6-month point when our pediatrician wants us to start giving her something other than breastmilk. But we are going to be doing some traveling soon and wanted solids established at home before we hit the road.

Gabriela's doctor just said to start with a fruit or vegetable. After much research on our part, we decided avocado would be the food of choice to get her started. Super high in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and healthy fats, naturally baby-food consistency without any preparation, and called the World's Most Nutritious Fruit by the Guinness Book of Records, avocado seemed like a good starting place to establish healthy eating habits! Gabriela seemed to agree as she scarfed down a couple tablespoons of the stuff on Saturday before we cut her off. (I think she would have eaten a lot more if we'd let her . . . little porker!)

During Sunday's picnic and hike in Mangabeiras Park, we took along an avocado, stripped Gabs down to her shorts (easier to wipe off her skin than a shirt), and let her picnic with us too!

Sunday night, we got out the Munchkin mesh feeder and turned Gabs loose with it. (You drop in whole pieces of food, snap on the top, and then the baby can create their own "puree" by eating the food through the mesh. Also great for teething babies - just put in something cold!)

She had entirely too much fun feeding herself (and throwing the feeder across the dining room table). Towards the end, Eric stepped in and helped hold it for her so she could get the last little bit out.

As expected, the mesh feeder was much messier than spoon-feeding. But, luckily, babies are 100% washable!

It was still early Sunday evening and I needed to fix supper, so Eric put on his swimsuit and took Gabriela for a swim/bath in the big tub.


Those two had fun splashing around for almost 45 minutes!

With the change in diet comes some fun changes in baby poo too. I am happier than ever that she usually takes care of that business on the toilet - much easier clean-up that way!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com