Adventures in Parenting #34: Baby Food

A couple of months ago I wrote a how-to blog on feeding your child rice cereal for the first time. Baby food follows the same step-by-step instruction for the most part except the parents are by now smart enough to feed him while he is fully dressed (idiots!) and, at least in our case, the baby is decidedly less upset about his progression to the next level of food. I heard from many of when I wrote about rice cereal concerning your own baby's rejection or at least suspicion regarding that "food" substance and I think it boils down to two things: 1.) No one likes change. This is particularly true of small humans who have only been on the planet for a handful of months and don't have the coping skills to deal with transition. Of course they don't like being spoon fed when their food comes so much quicker from a bottle.

2.) As mentioned previously, rice cereal is disgusting and should be ashamed to share a name with both rice and cereal.

Hence, the transition from rice cereal to baby food was much easier than the one from formula to rice cereal. We were told to start with one feeding a day and to feed Cooper the same type of baby food for three or four days in case he turned out to be allergic to something. (Side note: From here on out, if I write something like, "We were told" or, "Our research indicated" or, "We found out", you should just read it as, "Lindsey researched this topic extensively and told Brian what the plan was and he agreed." I'm a very involved parent thus far but when it comes to researching procedure, I just trust that Lindsey will find the right answer. Hopefully she's not attempting to kill our child and thereby pulling me in as an accessory.) Lindsey bought several kinds of baby food, including sweet potatoes, peaches, carrots, bananas, and we began our baby food odyssey with sweet potatoes. It started out well:

Having become used to the "chair = food" equation, he knew there was a delicious awful bowl of "rice" "cereal" headed his way. What a treat! But this turned out to be a little different and he wasn't exactly sure what to make of it:

Then he WAS sure what to think about it and started reached for the container, demanding more:

Then he DID get more and he got so excited about it he needed to compose a song for the occasion:

Then Lucy, the Beagle, got upset because as usual we were paying more attention to Cooper than her and so she started ottering (rolling around on the floor, on her back, pushing off like an otter in a river) right next to Cooper in order to distract him from the task at hand:

Side note: I rarely talk about or post pictures of Lucy in this space because I've only just decided for good that we're keeping her instead of turning her into a medical study for retarded dogs and I didn't want her to spoil the archives of this blog should she be sent packing. Kind of like how an ex-girlfriend ruins a family picture. This means you're part of the family, Lucy, so don't mess it up.

In the end, having covered himself in sweet potatoes and his belly full of a foreign substance that would very soon make for an incredibly "interesting" diaper, the King Baby was content:

Since this time, we've continued the Cooper-Baby Food experiment with a variety of flavorful choices. He thoroughly enjoys sweet potatoes, tolerates bananas, and has a hard time processing carrots. I wish I had a picture of the time I fed him peas but I was too busy laughing hysterically to hold the camera still. Suffice it say, he was NOT a fan and I can't blame him. On smell alone, few things are worse than peas. By far his favorite, the food that must surely come directly from the hand of God himself, is peaches. Once the taste of peaches hits his little tongue he starts shaking and moving and dancing in his seat and if you take even a fraction of a second too long to spoon the next mouthful in, he will straight up YELL at you until you rectify your mistake. It's a little bit terrifying. On the other hand, this is what he looks like after he has peaches so I guess I can't complain too much:

If I had to choose between rice cereal and pea baby food, I would probably just die, Brian