We started Luke on solid foods a couple of weeks ago. Everyone’s been asking how he’s doing with it. Eating has never been problematic for this child. I’m told it’s common for babies to have trouble figuring out that whole nursing thing. Not my kid. He wasn’t out in the big bad world for more than an hour before he was looking for a meal. “Hold still, Mom. Let me show you what you do with those things.”
Likewise with solid food. We put him in his shiny, new high chair, wrapped a fluffy, new bib around his neck, and expected him to be fairly confused. Not so. He leaned forward as far he could go and opened his little mouth wide, making expectant little gurgling noises until Shawn got the spoon in there. He’s a natural. One might go so far as to call it a talent.
Of course, the term “solid food” is relative. He started with organic brown rice cereal (which I affectionately call “mush”). Last week we moved up to avocado and breast-milk soup (avomush), and today we hopped up to yams (yammush).
I would like to make a public-service announcement to the bib-makers of America. Make bibs bigger.
Mush gets everywhere. Certainly, it gets all over the kid (mush-mouth), and usually all over me (mush-mom). I’m told that dogs are quite handy in cleaning up the mush-mess on the floor. We don’t have a dog. We have cats. They do nothing useful -- ever. This is why I have a mush-mop.
And the mush-mess doesn’t stop at lunch, I’m afraid. Kids believe in encore performances. We can go ahead and call that vommush. The mush-mom has changed her shirt three times today because vommush.
All this mush is hand-mashed by Dad, by the way. He’s the mush-maker.
We’re still only having our mush at lunchtime--that would be the mush-meal. In a few more weeks we can have more mush-meals. Which means more mush-mess and mush-mopping. But my little mush-monster likes his mush, and this is all part of growing up.
Life is messy. Mush-mess is only the beginning.