Welcome to the Experiment We Like To Call Meal Time…

Meal time.  Ha! 

When The Boy was merely drinking his bottle, I couldn’t WAIT for him to start solid foods.  He was a spitter-upper.  Everywhere.  Almost every bottle.  I could count on having a formula bath on a daily basis.  The doctor had assured me he would grow out of it as he got older and, thank goodness, he has.

The introduction of solid food, however, was an interesting one in our house.  Firstly, I had read a lot about when to introduce baby cereal and how to make meal time a “calm, peaceful, enjoyable experience for mom and baby”.  HA!
The first month of cereal was pretty much a wash.  If The Boy even saw me mixing up that rice or barley cereal, he would start to cry.   He wouldn’t sit in his highchair.  He kicked when I started strapping him into his usually fun rocking chair.  I was met with an unhappy glare as I put the spoon near his lips, smiling and cooing and telling him how “nummy, nummy” rice cereal was.  Sputtering, gagging, crying ensued. Suffice it to say, he was not impressed.
The introduction of homemade veggies and fruit went a bit better.  Although my picky eater refused to touch a morsel of jarred baby food, he would gulp down cubes of homemade carrots, squash, sweet potato, pears, peaches, and apple sauce.  He even allowed me to sneak some oat cereal into his fruit on occasion.  As I relaxed around meal times, so did he.  We’d smile, I’d talk about what he was eating, and he would coo back.  Even with the introduction of jarred meat (because, for the life of me, I could not get the texture of meat correct in my food processor), meal times were still great.  Messy, but great.
But the bliss that was pureed/jarred food was to be short lived.  Because as soon as The Boy realized that he could feed himself, that was the ONLY thing he wanted to do.  As soon as I put him in his highchair, he’s searching the tray for something tasty to nibble on.  Cherrios, crackers, pieces of cheese, pasta.  Although he “allows” me to feed him some mashed or pureed food, his desire is to be self-sufficient.  I am often met with this face:
He rips his spoon out of my hand and feeds himself- and by “feeds himself” I mean that he gets some food into his mouth, more food in hair, a bit on his highchair tray, and finishing with a solid gob of food on his mommy.
My floors are covered after every meal.  Cottage cheese, yogurt, huge chunks of banana and apple, wheat crackers and toast.  While breakfast is usually an easy go, lunch and dinner can take at least an hour to get through.

I have no idea what constitutes a normal mealtime in other houses, but ours has become an ever changing, daring experiment.  And don’t even get me started on the mopping…