Food Week, Day 7: Food week is dead. Long live Food Week!

I think Food Week will have to continue, though perhaps in a modified form. Because I have not skimmed the surface, people, and I have eleventy-billion food-related draft posts. And by “not skimmed the surface” I mean “not covered much at all except detailing Hank’s fairly uniform meals.” I think for the sake of those readers who are not currently feeding babies, it might be nice if other topics came back into rotation as well.

I’m also behind on almost every facet of my life right now so…we’ll see. Expect more actual practical advice and reflection on early feeding soon, and a list of easy finger foods as well. AND: if you are writing/have written about food on your blog, leave some links in the comments. Let’s expand the conversation.

Henry’s menu today

Breakfast: Henry does not take spoon feeding well unless what’s on the spoon is either yogurt or applesauce. I’ve taken to holding onto bowls of things and letting him dip/grab what he can out of them. If the puree is lumpier, it gets dumped on his tray. He’s pretty good at getting foods from tray to mouth that don’t seem immediately grab-able. Those babies, they are survivors. That said, there has gotta be a better way. Someone should invent some sort of tool or device to get soft or liquidy foods from receptacle to mouth. Hmmm. You know with the preponderance of baby gadgetry in this world I’ve bet someone has…Okay, so I try to offer Henry the spoon. You saw the video. But I haven’t given him much practice. Again–this food shit isn’t intuitive (at least in my experience). I, like perpetua, have wondered when I’m supposed to be “teaching” my kid to use utensils. Again, someone tell me what and when.

Anyway, Henry has been particularly anti-spoon lately, so all finger foods all the time it is. This morning it was (unflavored) instant oatmeal (I find that it’s easier to get it lumpier when you use instant) with some applesauce and yogurt mixed in. Limit the water you mix in to keep it clumpy, drop spoonfuls of oatmeal on their tray and you’ve got pick-up-able breakfast.

Morning Snack: Teething biscuit while we waited for our sushi. The three of us eat lunch out every Saturday. Distraction-stay-in-the-restaurant-high-chair-magic, those teething biscuits.

Lunch: While Baby Daddy and I had a just for grownups appetizer, Henry ate some applesauce from home (seriously, we made the biggest fucking pot of applesauce and Henry goes ape for it, so, yeah, the kid eats a shit ton of applesauce, get over it). Henry loves rice with dried shiso (Japanese basil, essentially), so he gets a big bowl of it whenever we get sushi (which is at least once a month). Sticky sushi rice is the perfect rice for his age: lots of sticky lumps to self-feed. He just powers through that stuff, and makes a hideous mess of himself (and the floor of the restaurant, which embarrasses me a little, but the place we get sushi is also not inexpensive, so whatever). Today he also enjoyed some shredded daikon radish out of one of my vegetable rolls. It was a big hit but I didn’t want to share more past giving him that little taste (be warned: you will delight in sharing food with your baby when they first begin eating solid food, because it’s just so exciting and new and OMG you are SHARING food! it’s so cute to give them little bites and tastes! look at him, he loves it! look at how he keeps pointing at it and then at his mouth! wow, he’s, um…insistent. wait a second honey, it’s mom’s turn. okay, I guess you can have another bite…just WAIT a SECOND I will get it FOR you…wow, he is really enjoying–GET YOUR OWN PIPSQUEAK! etc. etc.). See also: sips of Baby Daddy’s miso soup and bits of tofu therein.

Afternoon Snack: Another teething biscuit while we visited with my friend Jenny downtown. Yeah, I know, it’s beginning to look like this kid eats a lot of processed snacks. I told you we were not purists in the make-your-own department though we try. When we went strollerin’ in the misty crap weather for to get some coffee, Henry enthusiastically ate a banana mostly by himself. That kid loves banana, but he SUPER ULTRA LOVES being able to hold and bite a whole banana by himself. If you’re squeamish and choke-feary, make sure the banana is very very ripe. This one was…medium. Henry takes impossibly large entire-mouth-filling bites that drive me a little crazy for the half second before he’s chewed and swallowed it without any trouble.

Dinner: Imagine a cute plastic divider tray with adorable monsters on it. Each section is a different shape, so it’s totally educational too. It was on clearance at Target, so though I know discount culture is a major world problem I still feel like I won at shopping, and by extension, life. In the little circle, you see there is cottage cheese (remember, you are imagining this tray of food). In the little triangle, you see carrot and potato mash–sweet and savory. In the little square, some cereal, applesauce and yogurt–ah! desert! In the big rectangle, the main course: over-steamed green beans (cut to about half an inch, but fally-aparty anyway) with melted butter. Delicious! What a lovely dinner! Do you:

A) Eat your dinner quietly and tidily, stopping only to say your first words, which incidentally form your first sentence: “Why thank you, Mother.”

B) Eat a little bit of each thing, save your dear, delightful cottage cheese which you eat entirely, making the usual mess as you learn and grow.

C) Shit yourself spectacularly after about five minutes of flinging everything you can get your chubby fingers on off your high chair and closing your mouth tightly at every approach of a spoon. Proceed to put your hand in your shit while being changed, then put your hand in your HAIR before I can stop you.

I don’t know what YOU would do in this little thought experiment, but maybe can guess what Henry did under the exact same circumstances. After the world’s worst diaperchange fail that necessitated full clothing removal, I put a t-shirt and pants back on him, but no diaper. A leftover bonus from doing elimination communication with him when he was younger is learning that he has very predictable bathroom habits. So I wasn’t worried about him peeing during the rest of dinner. Though, I don’t know why I didn’t stop and think: hey, the spectacular dinner shit was actually very out of the ordinary, maybe letting Hank go commando until bedtime isn’t such a good idea. For some reason, because I was already frustrated, I just didn’t want to deal with getting a diaper on him in addition to clothes. You might guess that this story ends up with him soaking his pants during dinner, but you’d actually be wrong.

So, “finishing” dinner ends up being a bust, as no food is consumed. Whatever. It’s clear after only a few moments that Hank has no interest. His stretchy pants and long sleeved shirt are basically spotless, and I’m tired after the poop-stravaganza that had involved a hobo bath in the downstairs bathroom sink, so I think–why bother changing him into proper pjs?

You see where this is going? You’d think I’d notice his little unpadded buns, but he is in full chatterbox flaily mode so I’m just trying to brush his teeth and get to the finish line here.

I’ll tell the not-as-blog-worthy truth though: I didn’t put him down for the night with no diaper, which would have of course been a fucking disaster. I caught on before he was asleep. And before there was any bladder releasing. But not soon enough for it not to be totally routine disrupting and annoying.

Mommas? Don’t feed your babies dinner without diapers.