Baby loves broccoli!

It was a gorgeous day in Nashville. It was sunny and warm quite rare since we have lived here. Evie was not bothered by the time change this morning but tonight she crashed before her bedtime.

We went to Cheekwood for the day and had a wonderful time. Cheekwood is a botanical garden on property once owned by the family that started Maxwell House. It was a great place to walk with lots of pretty flowers and artwork. Evie enjoyed the scarecrows made by area organizations and we enjoyed the beautiful grounds. The Faberge exhibit was pretty cool too. We had a delicious lunch at the Pineapple Room; the restaurant on the property. Carl had pork tenderloin with mashed potatoes and roasted root vegetables. I had potato and leek soup with a salad. My salad had delicious fried green tomatoes almost as good as Maddie's at Birkdale.

Evie took a little snooze on the way home and then we had to clean up our condo for a viewing. We are moving out next week so it's time for them to find someone else to move in soon. We went to visit our new house and to walk at Crockett Park. We are really looking forward to being able to walk to the park from our house. Not much longer!

I read an interesting article this morning about exposing babies to different foods. It suggested feeding your baby at least one food from each of the 21 plant families before the age of 1 so this got me thinking that I need to give Evie a greater variety of foods. Some of the suggestions had not even occured to me such as mushrooms, artichokes, eggplant and beets. We headed to Publix to get Evie some broccoli and some fruit. She LOVES broccoli even when her other choice is melon. I found this article in Parent's magazine and plan to try some of these suggestions with Evie. Parents often worry about food allergies and choking which are valid concerns. This article said that most of our concern stems from outdated information with little to no research to back it up. I think we often do not give our baby new foods because we think they may not like them; when really it might be that we do not care for the particular food. New research shows that it is better to give your child a variety of food rather than waiting days between the food. This article really got me thinking maybe Evie would prefer chickpeas, asparagus, and guava rather than oatmeal and rice cereal with baby food. I'll keep you posted!