just eat it

Something that Ki and I absolutely love to do is go out to eat at I guess what you would call ethnic food restaurants. I can never get enough Japanese food but we also really enjoy Indian, Greek, Chinese, Mexican (does that count as ethnic in San Antonio?), and Thai. We're also pretty willing to try new things. There are foods we don't like as much as others, but there are an awful lot of "weird" things that we really enjoy.

One of the things we are most looking forward to as parents is introducing our children to a wide variety of foods. Neither of us has the most healthy background and we are working on changing our outlook on food so we can teach our kids without having to be blatant about it. Our goal is to eat delicious food that is also good for you. Another aspect of our desire is for our kids to grow up eating all kinds of cuisines without thinking it's weird or exotic. It's just food.

My parents made me and my sister try all kinds of crazy weird to us foods as kids and I have to say that I'm a better person for it. Part of it was out of absolute necessity because we lived in foreign countries and it wasn't always easy to predict what was going to be on the menu or even what the dish would actually turn out to be once ordered. Part of it was because my parents wanted us to experience new things. We weren't allowed to say things we weird, only different. And we had to try a little bit of everything so we could know if we liked it. If we didn't like it, it wasn't a big deal but it had to take an honest effort first.

Tonight was Ki's work Christmas party. The end of October through the first part of January is the busiest time of year for his store so Christmas parties are usually a little late but that's kind of awesome. It takes a little stress off the season! Tonight we got to eat at a really fantastic restaurant and most of it was covered by the store.

I've noticed that there are certain foods the baby likes and dislikes. It's a mother's intuition not a scientific process and it'll be a few years before I can really substantiate any of this but I'm standing by my thinking that I know when the baby likes something or doesn't like it. Like when I lay on my left side like you're "supposed" to, the baby kicks all crazy hard until I move. The baby does not like shrimp (which is a shame because I definitely do) and is only kind of tolerant of beef. The baby loves cranberry juice, oranges, raw squash, baby carrots, and chicken flautas. And tonight, we can put calamari at the tippy top of the list.

I was eating and enjoying my spicy calamari salad and noticed the baby was wiggling quite a bit. I just happened to switch to eating some white rice and talking and laughing for a few minutes and then back to my salad. The baby went crazy. I waited a few minutes before my next bite and the same thing! I told Ki and he didn't believe me, which I don't blame him for, so I put his hand on my belly where all the movement was happening and took another bite. Sure enough, Baby C went crazy!

As I get closer and closer to my due date, I get a little more nervous about certain things like whether we're going to have the right gear right away or if I'm going to collapse under sleep deprivation. But I get a little more excited about this baby being a toddler and then older and watching Ki with him or her. And tonight I am especially excited about how much fun we're going to have trying all kinds of foods for the first time again through our child.

I cannot tell you how much I love my little family already even though I have yet to really get to meet one third of us.