Kaia has been exploring.. literally everything, everywhere she can get her hands or mouth on. She’s been picking up random scraps of food on the floor and eating them. She finds her way into the open dishwasher and cupboards in the kitchen and tries to climb right in. And with us, she’s trying to pinch, pull, and grab pretty much everything she can see: my hair, nose, lips, teeth, toes — whatever is there, she wants dibs on. The cute but slightly disgusting thing she has been doing is sticking her tongue into my mouth before bedtime and running her tongue over my teeth, or even touching my tongue with her tongue. I told her that this is a bit weird and not quite “normal” for mommy/daughter affection, but she doesn’t seem to mind and continues doing it while giggling.

Each night, I tell her that she is the greatest gift of my life, and I’m so grateful and so lucky to have her. I know as the days and years go on, she will get bigger and older, and she will no longer need me as much. In just a year, she may push me away when I try to hug or kiss her, but I hope she doesn’t. In a year or so, she likely will not want to stick her tongue in her mouth. She’ll understand things like “disgust” or “shame.” She’ll want some forms of affection and not others from us. But I do hope that I will be able to foster an environment for her where she feels safe and secure, not just physically, but psychologically. I hope she can feel comfortable cuddling with me and sharing information with me. I really do not want her to feel a lack of psychological safety the way I did when I was growing up. I may have felt safe physically while in the presence of my parents or in their home, but there was never a time I actually felt safe to think or feel what I did, and especially NOT to voice it to them. Sometimes, it felt like there were thought police around, and I don’t want her to feel that way at all. I want her to feel safe in every possible way with me.

Kaia has now had about 220 different types of solid foods and spices. I was eager to have her try a lot of Asian desserts… but unsweetened that I grew up enjoying, such as dou hua (tofu pudding) and grass jelly. Given that I am actively trying to not include added sugar or salt into her diet, I’ve been giving her the plain silken tofu and plain grass jelly to try. On Friday, I picked up freshly made grass jelly for myself, and for her to try out without the sugar syrup. I wasn’t sure how she would do with it, especially since.. it’s probably the only gelatinous thing she’s had, not to mention the only black-colored solid food she’s had. Initially, when she had her first taste, she made some faces and pushed it away. But then she’d come back for a couple spoonfuls and then push it away, all the while trying to get her hands into the bowl to smush the jelly between her fingers. On day 3 trying out the grass jelly, she just wanted… ALL of it. She would try to grab mine after I added sugar syrup to it. She wanted more and more and didn’t want to stop until I made her stop. It was so cute and hilarious to watch this.

I hope she embraces all the subtly flavored Asian desserts I introduce her to, especially once we introduce some sugar to her from time to time.

The last couple of days, Kaia’s solids eating has been sporadic. She’s been drooling a lot, sticking her fingers and fists in her mouth, and exhibiting irritation due to teething. I guess from the age of about 4 months to 3, pretty much any type of annoyance or pain for a child can be attributed to teething. Upset? Teething. Not eating? Teething. Rejecting her bottle? Teething. Teething likely can cover about 95% of all grievances at this stage of development, as it’s been said that teething is the most painful thing that human beings go through.

Today, I made something new for her: Instant Pot keema with peas and potatos, made with ground turkey. Making keema with ground turkey is a bit unconventional, as it’s traditionally made with lamb, goat, or beef, but I happened to have turkey, as I originally got it since Kaia still hadn’t had any turkey yet. Plus, I figured this would be an easy way to introduce it to her, along with more Indian spices.

I originally served this to her without salt as usual, but with rice. I had quite a large helping of keema in her bowl, and I figured whatever she didn’t eat, I would just finish. But I was shocked to see that she ate the ENTIRE portion I served, which looked like an adult portion of keema! She loved it so much and kept sticking both hands into the bowl to try to self feed whatever chunks of turkey and tomato her little hands could grasp! It was the cutest thing. I wish I had recorded her doing this, but I unfortunately had both hands dirty from feeding her food. But sometimes, we just have to live in the moment. It was such a happy thing to see her really get into the food and enjoy it, barely pausing to take breaks and constantly “mmm”ing the entire time. I love watching my baby enjoy the food I make her. It is one of the best feelings.

I’ve never been much of a Halloween person. My parents never really cared about any holiday. I was only ever allowed to have one costume that I was supposed to wear until forever (that ended up being a crappy jack-o-lantern costume). I went trick-or-treating, but I usually disliked about 80 percent of the candy I was given. I always used to wonder why most of the candy I got from trick-or-treating was crappy — mostly things I didn’t like, such as candy corn (the WORST), Hershey’s kisses, too many tootsie rolls. I can’t even remember all the junk and what we ended up doing with all of it because we definitely didn’t eat it. But I always wanted Twix or Skittles, or the “good” stuff. I rarely got those.

Now that I have a baby, I knew I wanted to dress her up and as something edible for Halloween. I really wanted to dress her up as a mango, but alas, I couldn’t find any baby mango costume (or any mango costume for that matter). So I went for the next closest thing that was sweet (and not too expensive): a strawberry. The added bonus of this 3-part costume was that outside of Halloween, she could still wear the base pink shirt and white stockings.

Chris thought my strawberry idea was “meh” in his words. So he got her another costume that was also simple but effective: a bottle of milk, complete with a red hat with a “nipple” on top. Not only that, but there’s even a millimeters measurement on it, as we measure Kaia’s milk in milliliters and not in ounces.

Dressing up my baby as edible delights was a predictable route for me to take, but I didn’t realize we’d become THAT family that got our child more than one costume per year. 😀

When there’s a baby at home, there’s almost always something additional you need to buy, whether it’s more diapers, diaper cream, wipes, clothes, supplies… It feels like you’re in a never-ending cycle of constantly consuming more products. Chris just placed an order for more diapers and noted that for the same size box of diapers, quantity and size of diaper, the price has gone up about 17% since the middle of the year — seriously? All I have to say is — our salaries have definitely not gone up by that much since mid-year.

My nanny also keeps telling me that Kaia has outgrown the infant bunting bag for her stroller, and I need to upgrade and get a toddler sized one, as it’s getting colder outside, and she needs to stay warm. I’ve been stretching the infant bunting bag for as long as possible since last winter, we barely used it at all, other than to take her home from the hospital after she was born. So I finally sucked it up today and ordered a new, larger one. And to add to the list of things to buy: the nanny also suggested getting layering pieces for Kaia – short and long sleeved undershirts. But that also means she will need more sweaters and thicker clothing, especially for January and February when it will be especially chilly here in New York.

Next thing you know, she’ll be walking, and we’ll need to get her all types of different shoes, as well. And then we’ll find even more things she needs. We’re always in a state of buying more stuff now.

The nanny was excited to see all of Kaia’s new clothes, both clothes I’d recently purchased as well as gifts that I finally pulled out of the drawers to have washed, as she finally fits a lot of these now. She looked at a number of the clothes labeled as “12 months” in size and held them against Kaia.

“12 months?! You may only get 1-2 wears out of some of these NOW, and she’s 10 months now!” the nanny exclaimed.

That’s funny to think about. When my baby was born, she was so small that she didn’t even fit her newborn clothes. I felt a little worried about it, but in the end, she grew well and gained weight at a healthy rate. And well… the upside of having a small baby is that they get more wears out of all their newborn to 0-3 month clothes! Amazingly, some of the Australian clothes she was gifted that are 0-3 months she still manages to fit!!!! These things run big and are stretchy!