Every Sunday, we go as a family out for an early lunch at our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant. It’s a fairly new “tradition,” but one which we have all fallen in love with fairly quickly. Pea prefaces the outing by running around the house chanting “I want a big bowl of cheeeeeeese…” That big bowl of cheese she’s referring to is queso, which we order with spicy ground beef mixed into it and it comes with the most perfectly salted (and handmade) tortilla chips, and while it sounds a lot like a heart attack in a bowl, here in Texas, it’s a culinary wonder and quite worth the health risks. In my opinion. Because cheese is the most perfect food. My husband once asked me if I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, what would it be? WIthout skipping a beat. Cheese.

So we don’t eat like this all the time. It’s really our once-a-week treat to ourselves for really stepping up the whole nutrition intake in our home. We’ve both been working really hard at getting back into shape. And although we both actually enjoy salads and lean protein, come on, one can’t live on that alone. Boring. Especially for a house full of foodies. Which I can now proudly call us. It seems that Coco is quickly following in her big sis’ footsteps when it comes to delicious purees. Awesome.

Since my husband was en route back to Fort Worth last night from Moscow, of all places, we missed our Sunday Tex-Mex lunch. We opted to go today instead. (Yay, Mexican twice in one week! Yay!) We usually bring our Bumbo with us and plop it on the table so that Coco is a part of the group. Because she couldn’t sit up on her own. But today, we were already out running errands when we decided to scoot over there, so I asked for a high chair, knowing full well (or so I thought) that Coco wasn’t going to sit in it. She might list a little to the right or left, but after a minute or two, she’d become supremely frustrated and call for me to hold her on my lap. But if I was lucky, maybe, just maybe, I’d get to scoop some of that precious queso into my mouth before that happened. But several minutes into the meal, my husband and I looked at each other and silently understood what the other was saying… wow, she’s going for a good long run this time. And then we looked at Coco. She had a spoon in her mouth and was sitting up. On her own. No wedging her in, no tilting her to the side, praying for the best. She was sitting up like a big girl. With beautiful posture, I might add. Whoa. Big, big day. And if you are a parent, you know this is a pretty major milestone! (And I should add here that I thought the Bumbo was the reason she wasn’t yet sitting up on her own. I thought maybe she relied on it too much to do her dirty work, and so had drastically cut down on the amount of time she spent in it. Now, I don’t know if that was just a crazy theory I had and I was right, or if it’s pure coincidence that after throwing the Bumbo in the closet, she started sitting up. I will never know the answer to that one. But still, count me a huge fan of that seat. It allowed her to be a part of so much socially that she would’ve missed had she been stuck in a baby seat somewhere.)

The Leukemia Society is coming by on Friday to pick up some donations I’ve put together for them. I think I’m going to include the Bumbo amongst the other items. We don’t need it any longer. My little girl is growing up. And how.