Update on the Lima Bean

I haven't written much about our little Lima Bean in a while, so I thought I'd fill you in on her latest developments. She'll be 19 months old at the end of this month and it's just amazing how much she knows now and how fast she is learning. Kids' capacity to learn and absorb everything around them is unbelievable.

Since this is a food blog, I'll share some Lima stories that relate to the world of food. My brother Mike sent Lima this excellent Swedish Chef doll a while back and she suddenly is really into him. For a while, her feelings towards him were hit or miss, but now she appreciates him very much. She loves that he wears shoes and that he stands relatively tall for a doll. She must also think he tires easily because she likes to start her mornings by laying him down in her crib and covering him with blankets so he can rest. Here he is with another Lima favorite, Elmo:



While these two were laying in the crib, Lima made snoring noises and said "night night."

Another recent Lima obsession is applesauce. Lima suddenly wants to eat applesauce with every meal. And she has a very specific way she wants to eat it. She wants to sit on a ledge I have in my kitchen (it's low to the ground and she can walk over to it), with only her diaper on, and eat it with her hands. The dish it is served in must come with a spoon, but she's still working on total spoon coordination, so when all else fails I see her dig her little hands right into the bowl. She tells me this whole request like this:

"Apple"
"Sit" (Taps ledge to indicate where she wants to sit)
"Spoon"
"Nudie" (Tugs at clothes to indicate she needs to undress)

OK, the whole undressing thing is my fault. One day she had on a really nice outfit and I told her that since I didn't want her to mess up the outfit I wanted her to take it off just during lunch and then we'd put it back on afterwards. (Even with a bib on, this outfit wouldn't have had a chance.) She apparently took that very seriously and now she associates applesauce at lunch with the need to be "nudie" as she says.

Obviously I have her wear clothes for 99% of applesauce feedings, but I do think it's very funny that she continues to mention the applesauce-related disrobing.

Finally, Lima's developed quite an understanding of how restaurants work. When servers are ready to collect menus, Lima is eager to pass them in. When she's really hungry and ready for the food to come, she says "Cook, food, eat, soon." She'll happily and proudly hand her little plate to a busboy when she is through with it, but she hangs on to it carefully if she's not quite done with her little tidbits of whatever we have given her. She's learned the names of all our local favorite places and even knows the names of a few waiters and waitresses we see all the time. I guess this is what happens when you are a city baby and you have so many restaurants right on your block.

So that's the latest Lima food news. It seems like she'll understand Christmas much more this year and we're already looking forward to the excitement that might bring.