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Baby Foods
Olivia's at the point now we can start 'solid foods'. We put that in quotes because it's actually more like 'mushy foods', resembling not so much food as a better-smelling variety of the stuff we spoon out for the cats. We went out and bought the rice cereal and basic 'baby veggies in a jar'. Ha! Have fun parsing that one! Of course, Ajax and Ted now always come running at suppertime since they think it's "their" baby food for pills.
We didn't realize how messy it could be with a baby that has hand-eye coordination along the lines of "place in hand, stick in eye".
How to teach a new baby to eat from a spoon in 10 easy steps:
Step 1. Place baby in highchair. Note how very tiny baby in very large chair with huge baby table attached bears close resemblance to 5'1 grandmother sitting behind wheel of new 2 ton SUV. The primary difference being, of course, baby can see out.
Step 2. Prepare cereal. Make sure water is not too hot or cold. Taste cereal. Note flavor resembles puree made from pizza boxes and paper sacks. Add maple syrup to cereal since baby imitated tank-cleaning suckerfish trying to get your French toast at IHOP the other day.
Step 3. Make sure you have baby spoon with special soft end on it. Note that the spoon must stay away from cats at all time since plastic end seems to be made from extremely tasty stuff, at least to cat.
Step 4. Attempt to feed baby. Note most of the food goes on the baby and not in baby.
Step 5. Play the game of food-covered airplane trying to land in baby's mouth. Note this results in baby energetically demonstrating that while mouth may be landing strip, neck and chest are taxiways.
Step 6. Make mental note that next meal baby will only eat in a diaper.
Step 7. Finish meal and scrape the rest of it off the baby and feed that to the circling cat-shaped-vulture that just perched on the side of her high chair.
Step 8. Give baby to Daddy to hold and listen to him exclaim now she smells like a "Bear-Claw". Give Daddy lizard-blink while he convulses in laughter at our comment, "baby's don't eat cookies."
Step 9. Stare in awe at mess on highchair, floor, cat, walls, ceiling, and baby. Hand still giggling husband-thing 409 and paper towel roll... "who's laughing now pastry boy?"
Step 10. Wash baby. In the tub.
Baby food is amazing stuff. Baby carrots will stain a binky nipple orange- FOREVER. It will also stain a baby's face to the point you think you need to break out the Brillo to get it off. "Out, damned Gerber!"
You also don't get to eat first. She sees you eating, she wants to eat too. Sometimes it's to the point you can't shovel the food in fast enough she gets so mad at you.
wonderful! you two have an incredible knack for describing these type of things....
you MAY find the maple syrup is a mistake, though. Once they get the sweets, they don't like the veggie taste.
And babies DO eat cookies... trust me!
Posted by: Jim S on November 13, 2003 09:58 AMBaby fruits might be easier to start with than the veggies cause they taste better.
Posted by: Pat on November 13, 2003 12:53 PMRofl, you guys crack me up. You want a good giggle, give her a banana and watch her try to hold it. Oh yeah, and try sweet potatoes. They stain too but the kids are usually crazy about them because they are sweet.
Posted by: Valleri on November 13, 2003 02:43 PMFYI: JT got to try each veggie for 3 days before getting the next one to be sure no allergic reaction. Once we went through all the veggies, we went 3 days for each fruit. Peas were the only ones to get little bumps on the legs (so he hasn't had a lot of peas but to test with the same results until he was three years).
And you know he loves his veggies. Several other mothers have told me that they tried fruit first and now their kids won't touch veggies.
BTW, you may want to check on the syrup, I know that honey carries bacteria that babies can't handle (though syrup may be ok). Just a thought.
Guess you'll have another blurb when she eats cheerios for the first time in a few months.
One favorite memory from my daughter's infanthood times:
Dear wife was late getting home, so I fed the baby. You pretty much described it. Only the plane/train/mutant spoon from outerspace game changed quickly.
Not content to just smear cerial and mushed veggies all over herself, my daughter who had just learned how to blow razzberrys with her tongue the day before discovered that she could do them with cerial in her mouth also.
I finally decided that why should she have all the fun. So dear wife walks in while infant daughter and daddy are spewing cerial at each other. (it's hard to hear that garage door over the sound of splattering cerial).
She takes one look at the two of us, and announces "That if I think it's that funny, then you can just clean her up also." Then leaves the room.
Wife comes back 5 minutes later when noise get bothersome to find, a trail of cerial encrusted clothes (baby's, not mine) scattered across the kitchen to the sink.
Baby is sitting in the sink full of water. Faucet is still running, water is overflowing from right sink (the side with the baby in it) to the left sink where it is draining. Daughter is screaming at the top of her lungs while splashing water at Dad while dad is spraying water with the small black hose at the baby.
Wife starts crying, and walks away.
Needless to say we made a horrible mess. Especially once she discovered how much fun the stream of water pouring from the faucet was.
Baby finally wound down and was falling asleep while being dried, oiled, diapered and pajammaed.
Fortunately cleaning up the spilled cerial and veggies was easy because the floor, as well as the cupboards, appliances, counters, etc were already drowning in water.
Feeding the baby - 20 minutes.
Cleaning up the baby - 30 minutes
Cleaning up after feed and cleaning the baby - 90 minutes
Remembering that night - a life time.