Rabbit

We went to dinner tonight to help Daddy's friend and their friends celebrate a birthday. When the salads came, Amelia reached over and just started helping herself to my lettuce. I usually give her the tomatoes, which she loves and are full of Vitamin C and other great nutrients, but I've never fed her lettuce since it is pretty nutritionally bankrupt. She just kept helping herself, munching away and enjoying it. Daddy looked across the table and said, "She's a rabbit!"

She loves the spaghetti at this particular restaurant and tried helping herself with a fork. It was pretty cute in a "Mommy can only see the cuteness" kind of way. Her independence mixed with her own brand of self-patience and focus is really neat to see in action. She did manage to feed herself some of the spaghetti, and I did intervene on a couple of forkfuls as well.

All this food was in addition to an entire serving of applesauce, half a single serving bowl of watermelon, a few crackers, and the aforementioned salad and tomato. When we got home, it was bedtime and she still managed an entire container of Yo Baby Yogurt, which is part of our usual pre-dinner snack/meal. She can really pack it away!

On the way out a dad stopped with his carseat-ensconsed 5-month-old and asked how old Amelia is in that wistful I-can't-wait-until-my-daughter-is-that-big-and-mobile kind of way, as I admired his quiet, self contained daughter and remembered how comparatively easy it was to be able to just cart Amelia around. A moment of irony it was.

And a shout goes out to Grandpa who is also celebrating a birthday today - the big 66!