Sometimes when mom is away the kids will play, or in this case my daughter and me! My daughter has always been one to make big jumps. She decided to stop nursing one day cold turkey. She never liked the bottle, but preferred straws and sippy cups. I just hope she does the same thing with potty training. She never liked baby food, and only lasted eating it for maybe a month. If it was up to her, she would have been done with it the first day. As soon as she started tasting real food around the 6-8 month range she just flat out refused to eat the baby food and would fight us with every bite. In all honesty, can you blame her? Baby food is unseasoned mush that has been in a glass bottle for who knows how long. I’m pretty sure the only reason adults get away feeding it to babies is because babies can’t voice their opinions. Well, technically they do. Babies tend to spit the food out and as they get older they throw the food. Sure the initial spit out response is explained away as the baby learning how to swallow the food or some mumbo jumbo like that, but lets be honest, when you taste something horrible what do you do? Spit it out!
There was a moment that was the final straw on even attempting to get her to eat it. One night when she was around the 7 month mark Kristin and I were eating dinner and attempting to feed our daughter her food. We had finished and Kristin had to run out to the store, leaving me in charge of trying to get some of this baby food into our daughters mouth. As soon as my wife exited the building my daughter just looked at me as if to say good luck. I was up to the challenge though. I started to slowly give her the food, and she would counter. I bobbed one way with the spoon and she weaved the other. WIth each miss she mocked me. With each miss she slowly chipped away at my soul. Ok, maybe it didn’t hurt my soul, but you get the point. She was already breaking me when she decided dodging the spoon wasn’t enough. She wanted to feed herself with the spoon. I tried to explain to her she wasn’t quite ready yet, but for some reason she doubted me.
On a side note, sometimes I feel like Marlin, the little clown fish from “Finding Nemo”. Marlin constantly tells his son Nemo, “You just can’t!” every time Nemo wants to do something. That scene flashes into my mind constantly! No you can’t jump over the couch! No you can’t bite the dog! No you can’t take the dog’s food and shove it in his mouth! No you just can’t drive the car yet, you aren’t even 2 yet! No you can’t feed yourself with the spoon yet! Most of the time my very determined daughter tries anyway. This time she listened though. After I explained she couldn’t use the spoon tonight, she stopped going for it. I guess this was a little confusing since she had started to learn to feed herself. I was just tired at this point, and wanted to get the food in her. So the spoon was no longer in her sights, instead she went for the bowl. This so far has been one of the most frustrating 10 minutes of my life. I once again said, “You just can’t!” and tried to convince her to eat just a few more bites. She once again started the bob and weave. I finally gave up and just looked at her. She looked back at me with a satisfied grin of victory. I then simply said, “what do you want?” She simply pointed at the bowl. So I gave it to her. I handed over the entire bowl that was holding a full jar of baby food. She grabbed the bowl, looked at me, and then put the edge of the bowl into her mouth. She was slurping the food from the bowl! The bowl covered her whole face, and when she finally took it down, a ring of food was circling the outside of her face. She didn’t stop there though. I guess she wanted to fully immerse herself in the food, because the bowl then became a hat. That last part was probably because I couldn’t stop laughing at the sight of her slurping the food, and she always loves to make daddy laugh.
Just as she finished up, mommy walked through the door. Needless to say, she started laughing and wanted to know what happened.
What happened was I was successful. I got some food in her, or on her, either way food left the bowl.
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