I had no intention of introducing solid foods this early, but Daphne not only has great head control, and sits fairly well in her Bumbo, but she’s been showing a LOT of interest in our food. So, partly out of Jason’s prompting, by following her prompts, she got her first real attempt at playing with real food yesterday.

Months ago, before we were born, we decided to try baby led weaning when it came time to introduce solids. The basic idea is that introducing solids is not about feeding, but rather all about curiosity. And a baby can generally manage what she feeds herself if she is the one who feeds herself. So, no putting parent putting food in her mouth. No purees to be “sucked”. Give the baby a wedge of food that she can grab and explore on her own. Of course it’s not fair to start off by giving her something that her toothless mouth could never handle – like a raw carrot – but something like a ripe pear. Which is what Daphne’s first food was.

We had finished eating dinner, and she was showing interest throughout the whole thing. So I had Jason get her a spoon to play with. (In baby led weaning, you do use spoons, but for them to feed themselves, not for putting food in their mouths for them.) She grabbed the proper end of the spoon, and with surprising little difficulty, got the spoon into her mouth as a fun toy. So I hemmed and hawed, then grabbed a pear out of the fridge, cut a slice so it would make a nice wedge, peeled it, and held it in front of her. You can watch the rest:

My hat is off to all the working moms out there. I’ve always had a suspicion that, while I could make it work if I had to, it wasn’t really for me. This first weekend of the next stage of yoga teacher training has proven that too me.

I love teaching yoga – and I love doing teacher trainings, because we get to dive into the deep end of the pool. It’s a new way of becoming a student again. But it’s draining. Two to three hours of practice a day, with additional physical work when doing practice teaching or looking at bodies, is a lot! Particularly on this four-month post-partum, anemic, sleep deprived mom. We also don’t have a whole lot of breaks during which I can pump – two (if I push it) during a 8 hour day (including commute) just doesn’t cut it. While I’m fortunate enough to be able to pump extra during the days between training weekends, and am close to keeping up with her supply, I know that this is only going to work BECAUSE I have only one day a week where I’m gone for that long, and the other two days I’m gone are at times when she wouldn’t eat as much anyway.

I can’t really say that my mind is always separated from what I’m doing in my training – it’s not too hard to generally stay focused on task and not drift off to wondering how she’s doing, except for during Savasana, that is. But it certainly is a distraction. And, though I am happy to see her when I get home, I’m sore and tired, so I wish that she didn’t require so much physicality out of me.

This first teacher training weekend focused on standing poses and backbends. With my new body, it’s certainly a whole new practice, and backbends, which used to be a place of freedom and exploration, are now tentative, cautious things. The teacher for this weekend is the same one that taught my 200-hr training, and I feel like she has changed her teaching. It may be due to the fact that we have a very wide range of students in the class, but I like the approach, even if I find it challenging and somewhat different than I’m used to. (Though, I can already see, we are likely to have a difference of opinion when it comes to the prenatal section of the class, and I’m already thinking about how I want to approach those differences.)

On that vein, there is a final project that needs to be done for the class, and I’m thinking about making it related to prenatal yoga in some fashion. The final project has sparked a fire of creativity in me – well damped by the other demands on my time though it may be.

I’m happy for these four (or eleven, depending on the week) days between training weekends, even if one day each week will be in back to back yoga classes. It feels like a chance to slow back down (ironic, coming OUT OF a yoga weekend) and reconnect with Daphne.