Folk Wisdom

On Friday Grace came over to get the third bedroom prepared for a woman named Fran who will be coming to stay with us for a while. I don't know exactly how long she will be here but she is coming from the Pittsburgh office and will be having her meals upstairs. So Grace came over with the cleaning guy to check out the room and see how things are. She ended up staying the whole time the cleaning guy was here so we had some time to chat.

She was giving me advice on care and feeding for babies. She said that when a new baby is born, the mom stays in one room for a month afterwards and a nurse comes in to help. The nurse massages the baby and wraps them up tight and them massages the mom. This is supposed to help the mom get better and the baby grow big and strong. She said if I should Anna's legs and give her lots of floor time, it will help her learn to crawl and grow strong.

Then we started talking about food and what to feed her. Some of it seemed like a good idea like making potato and mashing it up or feeding her dal (what they call things like lentils). Some of them I'm not likely to go for like cooking an apple and mashing it up with some honey. I think my favorite was the egg. She said I should boil an egg and mix it with some salt and pepper and give her that. What gets me is she said I shouldn't hard boil it. She never said to make it runny but that was implied and I thought, ain't no way.

When we went to the store yesterday I looked for a different kind of cereal but didn't see any. So I guess if Anna is going to get anything to eat other than rice cereal, I'm going to have to start making baby food.