Organic Pureed Sweet Potatoes

   6 Months old was just around the corner and I was so excited to celebrate this little milestone by buying some organic pureed sweet potatoes for my baby to try. Solid food. For the first time. I was so elated. It was one of the reasons I was at the grocery store, though, not the only one. I bustled around, collecting my cart of groceries, almost done when I got to the baby food aisle. A whole aisle just for babies. An aisle I have never really needed before. Shelf after shelf of a hundred different brands and flavors of foods for your baby to try.
   I joyfully stopped in front of the organic options, checking labels to make sure they hadn't added anything else as a filler to these little jars of change. Change. It hit me like a sack full of bricks. This tiny thing that I had carried inside my body for 9 months was changing. She was 6 months old. About to start eating food out of a jar. Food from FOOD and not from me.
   She needed me a little less. Obviously she still NEEDED me, I mean, I'm not about to pack her bags and send her off to find her own apartment or anything... but for the first time, she needed me a little less. And standing in an empty aisle, competing brands of organic pureed sweet potatoes in each of my hands, I started to cry. I wanted this. I wanted her to grow and change and experience all the interesting fun things life has to offer! I want her to taste all the different foods and get taller and learn to talk and go out on her own.
   But that didn't change the fact that at this moment, sitting at home with her daddy, was a little 5 month old baby who still needed me for everything. Everything. And I was sad to give up even a little of that for her to grow.
  I am not one of those women who expects her child to always hold me first in their list of priorities. I am not obsessive or a worrywart. I don't feel like I love my child with a new depth and type of love than I have ever loved before, or ever could again. I think love is just love, and one day someone else should be more important to her than I am. I know that God should always come before me in her heart, and one day, I hope she puts her husband and her kids before me too.
   But in this moment, standing in the harsh lighting of my local Safeway, I wanted her to need me and just me a little longer.
  The moment passed, and I chose a bottle of pure sweet potatoes and stashed it in the cart with the rest of my veggies and goods, eyeballed the other options and as I was about to walk away randomly reached out and grabbed some mashed bananas too. Because I was excited for her to try a variety of flavors. And I am thrilled that she's growing so well. She can already sit up. It feels like it's happened over night. It's made my life a touch more easy too, since now I don't have to worry about her getting bored on her back where she can only look at the boring ceiling. I wiped the silly tears from my eyes and went on to buy the last few ingredients I needed for a part dish, paid and left.
   A few days later, I let her try the sweet potato-breastmilk cool soup with a little spoon, and while she was excited to have the spoon in her mouth, she didn't look that excited by the flavor. So it's still mostly breastmilk for now. And I can't say that I'm that disappointed.