eater and independence

I'm pretty certain Mrs. Big Stuff is an eater, just like her mama. She definitely cares about food, and knows the difference between good food and just something bland and lame like rice cereal. She has this particular grunt and stare when she's eating something really good. The stare comes at me as she awaits her next bite, the grunt comes when she feels she has waited long enough! Last night we were amazed as she chomped a whole baked sweet potato, then moved on to avocado and topped it off with organic apricot applesauce. When she was still grunting, Jeff just handed her a wasa cracker so she could feed herself and we could get busy on the dishes. She then makes these magnificent poops (like three or four stinkers a day!) and seems ready for more food. One thing that I love about her food fascination is that I no longer feel too worried when I leave her. Since she never took a bottle, my breast was pretty much her only key to nutritional growth. Yesterday, for example, I left her with Jeff, raced out of the house and up the mountain. After getting used to hiking that hill with an extra 50 lbs (the height of pregnancy) or with the 15 plus pounder strapped to my chest, walking solo feels flying. I am fast and furious, my chicks rockin' it in my ears, my dog happily racing alongside me. Yesterday was that wild spring Montana afternoon, sun and wind and clouds and finally some teeny, little hail balls and I tried to keep up, taking off my hat and vest, putting them back on, all the while looking down at my little house, the river, this valley I so love. At one point Nina Simone's "Wild is the Wind" came on my shuffle. I listened to Nina's powerful, soulful self wail about the wind, about her lover, about the 'sound of mandolins' and I felt how wonderfully full and intense life is. These moments of flying sola are helping me find that old strength in myself, the self that is only concerned with the now, of the path in front of me, of keeping the weight off of my calves and the wind at my back, even if it's just for the forty five minutes up and down the mountain, until I can come home to my sweet, grunting girl.