Day 147: Bamba Baby

Today was Michal's nine month checkup.  As usual, she was a rock star and impressed our awesome pediatrician, who was excited to see which cloth diaper Michal was wearing today.  Unfortunately it turns out the M has an infection in her right ear, so she is again on amoxicillin.  Extra yogurt is on the menu this week to try to avoid any sort of yeast-related guest, like we had the last time.


Here are her stats:

29" long/tall (It just feels weird to say "long") - 89th percentile

20 lbs., 8 oz. - 75th percentile

head circumference: 17 3/4" (I don't recall which percentile, but not in the your-kid-has-a-huge-noggin area)

I have been looking forward to this appointment for a while, partly to see if Michal is continuing her anti-Rothschild streak of being tall (my father's side of the family is vertically challenged), partly to pepper the pediatrician with a myriad of questions.  Most of my queries were food-related: how should we approach the sippy cup given Michal's penchant to use it as a weapon, how and when to transition from formula to good old cow's milk, what should we consider and anticipate during our first plane ride in just three weeks' time, and.. of course... food.

We have been fairly adventurous in regards to food, and Michal has not had true "baby food" (aka purees) for a good long while now.  She eats finger foods almost exclusively, sometimes with extra assistance, and has had a fairly wide array of tastes: apple, apricot, avocado, banana, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, egg - just the yolk so far, green beans, mango, peach, peas, plum, sweet potato, tofu, yogurt... I'm sure there are more, I just can't think of them.  There are a few foods that I had heard were best saved until after the age of one, but I had also heard some newer research showed that these foods, often delayed because of potential allergies, were actually best to introduce EARLIER rather than later.  

For a long while, the general consensus was to wait on foods that could cause a food sensitivity, as if introducing it earlier could make that sensitivity more likely.  There is new research, though, from the past few years, that actually shows the opposite.  This study, conducted with children in Israel and the UK, looked at the incidence of peanut allergy in children in relation to general societal norms in the ingestion of peanuts and peanut products.  In Israel, where children regularly teethe on Bamba, a peanut butter flavored puff, if you will, there is an incredibly low incidence of peanut allergies.  Conversely, in England, parents typically wait until a child is 12-18 months to introduce those products and, perhaps subsequently (?), there is a much higher peanut allergy rate.  This might show that we have been doing things completely wrong (which might, in fact, explain the growing rates of food sensitivities as of late), and we should be exposing kids to all sorts of foods earlier rather than later.

With this information in hand, and with the wholehearted blessing of our pediatrician, Michal is now free to experience the full breadth of a culinary palate, save anything that could be a choking hazard.   

First up - Bamba.  Given my dislike of peanuts and most peanut products, Michal's face is 100% right on in my book (Josh would disagree).  This was also the first time she has really had anything that was crunchy - her puffs sort of crunch, but really, they just dissolve.  She seemed rather perplexed by this strange food. 

Hmmm... what IS this? 

Still playing with it.  She has yet to figure out what to do with those chompers in front. 

What the heck was that, momma?

She did eat the entire piece, although the second piece ended up being instrumental in an all-out assault on her Zany Zoo toy.