Weekend Kat Blogging: The Care and Feeding of Our Wee Kat

Until this past week, we have been sitting Kat in her car seat, and crouching on the floor with her in order to feed her solid-food meals. Every supper was a vignette of “Crouching Parents, Uncomfortable Baby,” and was pretty much a comedy of creaky knees, curious cats and pureed pea speckled car seat.

But those days are gone now. As you can see in the photos, we have finally acquired a high chair, and mealtimes are much more fun, productive and comfortable for all. Kat for one, is thrilled. Look at that grin! (And look at her cute embroidered overalls, sent by a friend who made the cute fishies and monogram on her new embroidery machine. Thank you, Carol!)

One reason we took so long in picking out a high chair is that I am allergic to plastic. Well, not literally allergic;I just hate the damned stuff. And most high chairs these days are monstrous piles of ugly plastic destined to outlive our entire civilization in some landfill somewhere.

Ick.

And most wooden ones are of limited usefulness, because kids outgrow them quickly. And since Zak and I are not likely to have another baby in this lifetime, we cannot even pass it down through the generations, as it were. So, what to do?

Enter the Svan.

Designed and made in Sweden, the Svan chair is all bentwood birch construction, and in addition to being stylish-looking, easy to use, stable and safe, it can be used for years, because it converts from an infant high chair to a toddler seat, and can be adjusted to be used well into the pre-teen years!

That is pretty darned cool, right there, and the ability to use it for years offsets the price, which, considering its durability and construction, isn’t that bad at all.

Kat loves her chair–she loves to sit in it and watch me cooking in the kitchen; she can see everything that is going on, and be part of the action. She is right at the level of all the sights, smells and sounds involved in making dinner or baking dessert.

And feeding her has become much, much easier and more pleasant.

With her in the high chair and Zak in a chair, not only are there no creaky Dad knees involved in the equation, but they are at eye level with each other and can communicate better. While Kat is an extremely easy girl to feed, it is even easier now, since she cannot get as distracted by cats coming up to investigate the proceedings. (They still investigate, but as they are under her chair, they are out of her direct line of sight.)

The added bonus is that she can take meals with us at the table in the dining room. The other night, Zak and Morganna and I ate refried bean and rice burritos, and between bites of my food, I fed Kat bites of pureed refrieds and carrot soup. She was so excited to be part of the meal that she kept bouncing up and down in joy, her little eyes aglow and her carrot-stained mouth grinning wide. She was so bouncy in fact, that I had to tell her to “be still” when I went to feed her a bite, otherwise, the spoon was going after a moving target.

She learned the word “still” after three repeats; after five, she would still herself as soon as she saw the spoon approach her face. She would stop bouncing and pop her mouth open like a little bird and wait for the incoming spoonful.

I am amazed at how simple it is to cook for Kat.

In a block of several hours one afternoon last week, I made enough pureed food for about a month of meals for Kat. I still need to cook up a few more fruits, but she has plenty of vegetables to last for a while, including refried beans, mildly spiced masoor dal masala and what we call “baby curry.” No, it isn’t curried baby, it is a curry mild enough for a baby. It is a coconut milk sauce that is spiced with browned onions, garlic and fresh ginger with some cardamom, cinnamon, fennel, cilantro and turmeric. I mix it with iron fortified rice cereal, and Kat loves it. She also love the dal and fresh ginger spiced carrots I made her, though good guacamole is still her favorite solid food.

At the moment, she is eating coconut milk curry, dal, refried beans with garlic, onion, smoked paprika and cumin, guacamole, carrot/potato/celery/leek soup, sweet potatoes with cardamom, apples with cinnamon, apricots, blueberries, oatmeal mixed with fruits of various sorts, bananas, peas, carrots, broccoli, roasted sweet peppers and spinach. All of them have been made by myself and are organic and it is all incredibly simple to do. I just cook what I am cooking for us and take hers out before final seasoning and puree it, or I roast some sweet potatoes and peppers while I am otherwise cooking dinner, or steam some spinach or frozen peas on the back of the stove, and puree when it is done.

Then, I freeze it in covered ice cube trays until it is solid and store the cubes in ziplock bags in the freezer and they are ready to thaw and heat as needed. So simple. (Though, I do admit to buying a jar of baby food now and again, if nothing else, so I can use the jar later for something else. Like my own panch phoron mixture or to store beads.)

The next foods to be introduced will include tofu with miso, butternut or acorn sqash, curried boiled egg yolks, beets, turnips or radishes, and in a month or so, yogurt and cottage cheese.

I cannot wait until she gets teeth! (Though, perhaps I will have to wait for quite a while. Apparently, Zak, his sister Laura, and her girls, Danielle and Alexa, all took a long time to get teeth. Sigh. I will try to be patient.)

8 Comments »

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1. here’s to the gorgeous gourmet baby!

   Comment by bee — May 20, 2007 #

2. What a beautiful, clever, and joyful girl. *blows kisses at you and baby*

   LOVE that Cat Butt mug that Zak is feeding her out of!

   Comment by Charlotte — May 20, 2007 #

3. Wonderful set of photos, and an excellent choice of high chair! Nice to see Zak, too.

   **blows kisses**

   Comment by wwjudith — May 20, 2007 #

4. Well as a Great-grandmother, I was so impressed with your web-site. How you
   handled your approach to feeding this wee one. Now you realized it wasnt necessary to have the conventional hi-chair, to feed her. YOu handled feeding her the easiest way you knew how. Thats how parents do it. Good luck, Great-grandma of 8, Grandmother of 8 and Mother of 5. See I might know what I am talking about, LOL.

   Comment by DeAnne Moeller — May 20, 2007 #

5. Congratulations to Kat and to y’all!

   This morning at Whole Foods, my two-year-old son Chun Woo took great pleasure in sniffing and consulting on spices. He alutes Kat from afar. (And he loves kim chee.)

   Comment by Mary Ann — May 21, 2007 #

6. How do you get anything done when you have the enjoyment of watching the daily Wee Kat Entertainment Show. It brings a smile to my face just seeing her sitting in her new chair. Love the cat butt too:)

   Comment by Maureen — May 22, 2007 #

7. Wow, she is getting so big! Cute, cute…

   Her diet sounds yummy…I didn’t eat half of those things until I was an adult. Lucky, lucky KAT.

   Comment by Diane — May 25, 2007 #

8. Hello, everyone! Sorry I am slow getting back to answer everyone–the days are getting busy what with Kat, gardening, cooking, writing and putting together a new sewing room. (More on that later, for certain!)

   I am glad to know that folks like my cat butt mugs as much as we do! They are French, and the art is from the well-known French cartoonist, Albert Dubout. I love his cat art, but the one with the butt is my favorite. We also have a set of four dessert plates with the same art. Yes, I do have a bizarre sense of humor.

   DeAnne–nice to meet you! Yeah, I am all about improvising–which I agree is the way most parents really do it. You don’t need the latest gadget (we don’t have any baby monitors in this house–ugh–nor do we have a stroller–they are just not necessary for us) to raise a happy, healthy kid.

   Mary Ann–Kat loves to smell produce and spices at Whole Foods, too! And I cannot wait to introduce her to kimchi, though that will be a while. Mine is really chili hot!

   Maureen–some days it is impossible, and some stuff never seems to get done. Like laundry. It is always dirty. Of course, Kat makes for extra special dirty laundry, but still….

   It is all worth it.

   Diane–same goes for me. I never ate curry as a kid, or dal, or even refried beans. But, I see no reason to deprive Kat of these things, since she wants them, and they can do no harm, and in fact, are quite healthy. Besides, she really doesn’t like tasteless food. She will eat it, but she gets this accusing look in her eyes, like, “What the hell are you feeding me, Mom–Dad–what is this stuff?”

   So why go there?

   Comment by Barbara — May 28, 2007 #

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