things i love about her : eating

We have another girl that loves her food! Yeah!

Phebe basically eats what she's given. Although there are a few things she turns up her nose at for one reason or another... Milk is one of those things. And although I was told few Asian people like milk, I still decided to work on her. She will take milk/cream in her oatmeal every morning, so I knew she didn't have any issues with it. Now she also LOVES yogurts drinks and she will drink milk if I mix it with chocolate milk - I usually mix 3/4 parts homo milk and to 1/4 part chocolate milk. So, she's definitely appreciating milk much better now, in one form or another.

When we got home, I made Phebe lots of yummy congee - which is rice in a soup stock, mixed with chicken, creamed corn, red peppers, mushrooms, spinach, etc... depending what I had in the fridge at the time. Lilah took on a whole new love of congee too, and the two of them would munch it down. But by week three of being home, Phebe was starting to look at our supper plates... she'd point at our food and then point into her mouth. I've said this before, but what Phebe can't say in words, she can definitely get (her message) across to us, in actions! Once she got a taste of some of our creamy saucy pasta dishes, sherperd’s pie, lasagne, pad thai, chicken kiev, sweet and sour chicken, irish stew, thai chicken fried rice ...well, it was obvious that she REALLY liked the new foods coming her way! This girl knows good food!

So now, the congee days are basically over and she's eating what we're eating.

At the start we couldn't fill our little monkey, she would eat and eat and eat, until I thought she might actually pop. I think she knew she had to stuff herself silly, because there were set times for feeding and definitely no snacking in between meals, during her orphanage life. But I feel now, she's realized that food is available whenever she wants it and she only needs to utter the words, "nom-nom" to get it. So the overstuffing has stopped.

She is rather independent and loves to feed herself. But at times she also likes me to feed her. And more recently, she has wants to hold the spoon herself, but she wants us to direct it into her mouth. We generally just go with the flow.

She uses the word 'nom-nom' for food and is able to tell us when she's hungry - which is awesome. She also points out all the food in magazines and books and says "nom-nom!" When she first came home she would get upset when I took her grocery shopping and put the food into the cart, behind her, she couldn't understand what on earth was going on. She would look at me disgruntled, wondering why I wasn't giving her anything to eat, even though the cart was full of food! There is so much for these little ones to learn, so many new things they've never experienced before.

Our girl loves her fruit, just like her big sister - oranges, bananas and apples are among her favourites. And ANY kind of dessert you might offer her, our littlest girl definitely has a sweet tooth!

Also, before meals we say Grace and we all hold hands, together. Well, Phebe is the first to remind us now, she says "Pray!" and says her "AMEN!" just perfect. Right now she also thinks we should say it several times during our meal, as she squeezes her eyes shut and reaches out her arms to hold hands, again and again! It certainly makes us chuckle! We also read a Bible story every night after our supper and again, Phebe now understands this routine. She points to the book on the shelf and says "Bib-el" and then says "Eh A Eh A Eh A" - this is how she 'reads'! Of course, she’s mimicking myself and her big sister, Lilah, although hopefully, our reading is a little more intelligent than that!) She will also put her finger to her lips and say "Shhhhhhhhhh!" - Indeed, she's understands the theory of keeping quiet during story time, we're still working on the practical part of being quiet!

When mealtime and story reading is over, she knows it's her time to get out of her seat and she can surely be heard a few blocks away, shouting: "ALRIIIIIIGHT!" It's almost seems like a "Phew! Get me outta here already!"

She's pretty irresistible. In fact, I could almost eat her myself!