Food For Thought or Food and Thought

Since my last few posts have been on the somewhat more serious side, I decided to go with a "lighter theme" today. 

Food:  Reese has been changing her eating habits on a daily basis and it's becoming more difficult for this rambling working mom to keep up with her pickiness.  One day she will be perfectly fine eating her rice or oatmeal cereal in the morning and then today she spit it out at me (And of course I was already dressed for work) several times before I called it quits.  She is VERY interested in self-feeding and chewing.  And why wouldn't she be?  Everyone around her chews their food and puts it in their own mouth.  She's already very accomplished at this as well and has been snacking on Baby Mum-Mum's for a few months now.  But now she's literally turning her nose up at baby food and closing her mouth in a very defiant manner as if to say "EXCUSE me, what the **** are you trying to feed me?".  I tried to describe it to my mother but until she saw her do it yesterday with some diced carrots she really didn't have any idea what "the look" was.  It's pretty darn hysterical.  So we are just feeding her in a trial and error process which I guess is what every parent does at some point.  I just don't remember Ethan moving on from baby food this soon....but maybe my sense of time is now warped.

Thought: Ethan is becoming very anxious to learn how to read.  I had a "mommy date" with him Saturday afternoon and we went to Target to do some shopping.  As we were going around the store he kept yelling out the numbers and letters that he saw posted everywhere.  He told me "See mommy, I'm reading!".  So, while we were there I bought some index cards and decided to do what a few of my friends have done and post words around the house so that Ethan could start learning how to spell and read the various items in our house.  Someone was VERY excited to be doing this and couldn't wait to help me "hunt for the items" after I spelled them out on the cards.  Later in the evening every time he would go into another room I would hear him spelling out the words.  For some reason he was having trouble with "A", which is really weird because it's one of the first letters he learned quickly because -obviously- it's the first letter of the alphabet but also because it's in his name.  However when he was spelling the words he kept doing this:  P-I-the letter in my name-N-O to spell piano or L-the letter in my name-M-P to spell lamp.  Of course after the first several words I told him that he knew that letter and then it was a game to him.  He LOVES to joke and tease.  I have no idea where he gets that from. :-)  The other thing that he did when Jimm was taking him up to bed was: T-O-I-L-E-T: POTTY!  So we'll have to change some things around to reflect what he actually calls some of these things.  My mom also put "Waste basket" on the garbage can.  Who says waste basket? :-)