This morning I was looking back through my phone, watching videos of Dante from when he was 10 days old. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, since most of my photos and videos of him were moved to a separate folder since there are over 1000, and it was becoming a pain to scroll through all of them just to get to something different…like, cat photos. Babies and cat photos..that’s what’s on my phone.
I just can’t believe how big he’s gotten…how mature. Barely recognizable! There is no way he could’ve ever been that small! No way.
He’s 8 months old today. Oopsie… I forgot until just now when I typed it. Bad mom. I have a tendency to do that, as my brain doesn’t work as well as it used to, especially with complicated math problems like: how old my son is on any given day.
The other day I was trying to get him to eat more ‘solid’ foods. He’s been on the regular baby food, Stage 1, for a while… Pureed pulps of sticky icky messiness. He loves the crap out of mango – goes absolutely ‘baby rabies’ over it as a matter of fact.
While I was gonna list all the things he’s tried, I realize that may be quite boring to you, even though it’s extremely fascinating to me as a mom. I could talk to you passionately about baby food all day, if your eyes didn’t gloss over and your major organs didn’t shut down over how painfully dull the conversation was. Fact is, I can see why other moms bond together so easily and form unintentional cliques: the oddities of baby food combinations (organic chick pea, tomato, and beef with cumin…in a squeeze pouch? what??) can keep us yammering for hours long after the party’s over, the husband’s tapping his foot with the keys in his hand, and the babysitter’s gonna need overtime. For reals.
But yeah – Mom Brain, sorry – back to the other statement that I tried to give him some other real ‘solid’ food the other day… some Puffs-type cereal made for babies – they dissolve “almost instantly” so there’s barely any chance of choking. Let me just tell you, they didn’t dissolve instantly enough after the now-sticky mass turned on Dante’s gag reflex like the thought of water chestnuts would for me (blechkk!).
Alright, not ready for the crunch-turned-sticky rice puff cereal, little man? Attempt Two, let’s try out super-ripe banana cut into baby finger-sized pieces. After his wittle-itty-bitty pincer grasp pushed 15 pieces of banana around the tray, sticking to the back of his hands (unbeknownst to him) and ending up in his lap while his attention was turned to the zebra toy so inconveniently mounted to his swing tray, I modified said Attempt Two by crushing Puffs cereal in my fingers and sprinkling it on the banana pieces, effectively giving the slippery bits a Shake-n-Bake coating by which to (possibly) make his grasp a little easier. Or… a little stickier, as the Puffs dust turned into banana paste almost instantaneously, gluing bits of now-mushy and somewhat sand-papery banana to his hands. My own fingers sticky, and the container of Puffs now half-gone (hey, these things are damn good! nom nom nom), I cut out the middleman and said “okay kid, open up, these are for eating!” and popped one in his mouth, thinking he would swish it around and figure out how to gum it. Yeah that didn’t go too well. Let’s just say, gag reflex fully intact, I’m glad he discovered that he could swallow the thing whole. Yikes.
Attempt Three: …revert backwards a step by loading cooked apple pieces in a mesh “feeder” that he can chomp on… at least he knows how to eat food out of those. Without choking. And call it a day.
