Baby Food Wars

I haven't posted a BFW post in a while and thought perhaps it was time once again. The current battle is not exactly WHAT foods we're eating and introducing but rather HOW we are eating them. We are attempting to introduce Baby N to the concept of using a spoon to eat with. He still eats with his hands 98% of the time. It's just easy that way. I can cut something up to an appropriate size, put it on his tray and away he goes, (with my supervision of course).  Granted it can be messy and he tends to double fist things that are especially yummy which causes a lot of dropping into his lap. His usual practice of eating with both hands like this results in him jamming as much food into his face as is possible. With his cheeks puffed so far out he often resembles a hamster! I'm proud to say that most of the food DOES make it to his mouth and very little is dropped. However, he still loses a fair amount.  I probably need to get him one of those bibs that is designed to catch dropped food. It might make things a little easier. I've pretty much given up on bibs in general these days, and can't even remember the last time he wore one during a meal lol. *shrugs* just add that to the growing list of my motherly faults I suppose. Anyway apparently finger foods weren't messy enough for me and I decided we needed to up the ante.  On Easter Sunday we ate lunch with part of our family and there were two kids there both eating with forks. They are older than Nicholas but still, it inspired me to start introducing the idea of using a utensil to eat with.  I have a toddler after all, he's not a baby anymore, he should be able to do anything right?

We finally took the plunge a few weeks later and I wish I HAD put a bib on him that day! His first attempt was to eat yogurt out of a little bowl with one of the spoons we already had and had used to feed him baby food with way back when. It's a bit long I suppose and while he almost instantly grasped the idea that the spoon should deliver the yogurt his execution was a little off. Most of the yogurt ended up ON him rather than in him. Adorable to be sure but messy to clean up later. The main issue was that he was holding the spoon side ways so that when he scooped up some yogurt and started moving it towards his wide open pie hole the yogurt would drop out well before making it to it's destination. Lord help me though when I tried to touch the spoon and readjust it in his hand he threw a fit. He's gonna do it his own self thank you very much! OK, little man... go for it. He did manage to eat some of the yogurt and that was reward enough for him to keep working at it.

The next hurdle we faced arose the second time we handed him a spoon. This one was a shorter kids spoon that I had from a long time ago. I didn't tell him that it was a My Little Pony spoon lol. I bought it to get the plate and bowl a few years back,. I am a die hard MLP fan/collector!! Anyway back to the point, Nicholas had a slightly easier time with this spoon and some mashed potatoes. However he was apparently hungrier than a spoon could handle and reverted back to the double handed eating technique. He would spoon up some 'taters and try and to get them to his mouth while at the same time grabbing a handful of them with the opposite hand and shoving those straight into his face. Yum, Yum. Haha.

We are still working on letting him use his spoon and I know he'll get it eventually. However, we don't use utensils very often b/c I am the type of momma that is having a hard time letting go of my idea of a clean baby after meal times. We are sticking to finger foods for the most part and sometimes I hand him his spoon, yeah it's still the my little pony one, to practice with at snack times. For regular mealtimes though I'm finding that I value his ability to eat on his own without me having to worry about him jabbing his eye out. So far he's only tried once. Mastering the use of a spoon will eventually happen and once it does we'll move on to a fork. Forks make me seriously nervous. There isn't tooooo much damage the toddler of doom could do with a spoon but a fork.... or eventually a knife??? Lord, LOL, am I ever going to be ready for that? Probably not, but as with everything we'll do it anyway and be the better for it. For now, so long as he keeps eating his veggies I don't care how he shovels them in :)