Eating everything

Joy of joys Henry has now joined us at the dinner table (in his brand spanking new highchair that met the exacting specifications of my wife and simply could not be purchased from eBay - much like our pram, which she now hates.  Not that I'm bitter, you understand) for his evening meal.

The magical six month mark has been reached, so the kitchen is now open and he is joining the world of proper food.  Which has been slightly pureed and cooked without salt or any spices that might be too hot.  (Or dried chickpeas that are two years out of date and have been included because his dad is too tight to throw anything away and thought they would be ok.  You might want to read my previous post for the likely fall out of this.)  But apart from these slight stipulations, he is now enjoying a range of foods.

This is absolutely amazing.

I cannot describe how awesome (and I mean that in the dictionary sense) I find feeding my son food that I have cooked for the family and he appears to be enjoying.  Food is important to me and, thus, it is important to me that he enjoys it.  And boy does he enjoy it!  I love it.  We often have breakfast together to try and give mummy a little bit of a lie in and it is the most special moment of my day.

However...

I am finding the mess somewhat difficult to deal with.  Weaning has coincided with a streak of independence and developing hand-eye co-ordination that can whip food off a casually wielded spoon in a blink of an eye.  Does that food make it to his mouth?

Of course not.  It makes it just about everywhere but, smearing across whatever he is wearing, his chair, the table, his face, bits squeezed between his fingers, down his legs, on the floor.  Daddy struggles with this.  A lot.  Mummy does not appear to have a problem with it.

Daddy also struggles with occasional lumps.  Mummy, again, is considerably better at this.  I have, occasionally, needed to leave the room as he chews something a bit troublesome as my instinct is to whip him out of his chair and perform a paediatric heimlich manoeuvre on him.  Not wanting to communicate this sphincter-tightening anxiety to him and develop a fussy eater I instead extricate myself from the situation when it becomes too much to bear.  Henry, thankfully, remains oblivious to this and has happily gobbled up anything he can get his sticky little mitts on.  Daddy, meanwhile, has bought shares in antibacterial wipes.