Adventures in Eating

As you can see, Abhi is a messy eater. He likes to smear his food all over his face and up into his hair especially. It is hard to get away without giving him a bath everyday now because of these lovely manners. I am still feeding him mostly - the baby mush with some new chunky stuff. He is getting used to it and imitates my chewing... He is really good at grasping food with his fingers and puts food in his mouth. He is a pretty good eater most of the time and eats everything. Although, some things like prunes he rejected. I find if I keep trying, he will gradually accept new things he is not sure of at first. His favorites are sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, green beans, pears, applesauce and he has a newly found appreciate of yogurt (one of those new items that took time). The other night he had spaghetti and cheese which he seem to like...so things are getting more interesting. He has been eating graham crackers and toddler cookies for sometime to practice but he is moving on to more adventurous finger foods like shredded cheese, avocado, egg, and cheerios. On mother's day we meet our friends (Jenn, Oscar, Luli, and Fiona) for brunch at the Indian buffet and he got to try all kinds of interesting stuff like paneer (indian cheese), idly (lentil patty), watermelon, and mango. Of course, more ends up on the floor than in his mouth but he is working on it.

Eating does go beyond the highchair. Now that he is learning to put food in his mouth, Abhi picks up lots of things off the floor and does exactly that. This is nothing new, everything goes into the mouth, but this is small pieces of stuff that he thinks are for eating. I have to be careful about keeping the floors clean and keeping the cat food up on the counter. This is really causing a lot of distress for my cat Buster. He does not like his food to be unavailable! My other cat Marble just disobeys all my rules and gets on the counter to eat anyway. Our venturing outside is also providing new things to taste like dirt and mulch. Well, I can't say he is not adverse to trying something once (or more if I would let him).

Abhi loves books. As the child of a librarian, of course, he loves books! What does this have to do with eating you might ask? Well, he recently displayed a new kind of love for his books, he likes to eat them too. See the picture...notice the missing corner. These days he is finding that eating them is almost as exciting, or even more exciting, than looking at them. I am not sure where that corner went...guess he really did eat it. Little nutritional value I am sure but good practice chewing???

Tonight, it's spring vegetables and pasta, another new one. Yummy!