Feeding the baby, take two

Every day the caretakers have given us a bottle of kefir (yogurt) to feed to Aigerim. But only twice have they let Bobi feed the baby her first meal of the day.

The first attempt didn't go too well :) This morning she got another chance, with much better results.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. Each baby is expected to eat a bowl containing cream of wheat, porridge, an egg, bread and shaved cheese. That wouldn't be too hard, but the bowl looks like it's about half as big as the baby. How much food will fit into those little bodies? And (we still haven't figured this out) where does it come out?

Somehow, it does work. Today Aigerim even tried to cooperate with Bobi instead of squishing her hands around in the bowl. Still, after a couple of minutes of spooning she just couldn't take in any more food, and it slopped out over her chin.

My best guess, offered freely from a safe distance across the room, was that when the food comes back out, it needs to be thinned out with warm tea. This actually worked a couple of times.

It's amazing all the things a 7-month-old can already do: standing up, making noises which are more articulate than anything I can produce before the first cup of coffee, eating semi-solid food and drinking tea from a cup.

Aigerim couldn't quite finish the bowl. She tried -- she's such a sweet-natured little baby, and she loves sitting with her mama even when porridge is involved. But there was just too much food.

Galina was funny as always. Toward the end she came over and started calling Aigerim "deyavuchka princessa" (girl princess), probably because of her "leisurely" dining style. Then with much repetition and pantomime she predicted that Aigerim would look the same on her first birthday as she did today, with small bits of food in unexpected parts of her body. Then she helped rinse the baby, and we were off to play time.