Culinary Contests

Food really is glorious to we Seymours, but as many of you know it's been a rocky, finicky path to mealtime that continues to have a few bumps along the way. I am finally reveling in the freedom of preparing what I want to eat and not taking into (too much) account what Clare and Danny will think of it. Very liberating indeed. And I choose to believe that I am armed with lessons learned as we go down this road with Laura. I am quickly realizing, though, that it's not really going to be any less challenging.

We have enjoyed about four months of an easy feeding routine with her, once we got past the nursing/bottle refusal crisis. She did so well with her jars of food mixed with formula or yogurt. But she's a growing girl, and it's time to really amp up the table food offerings. The girl loves her cheese (comes by that honestly), and pasta and bread and crackers. What small child - or any human - doesn't? Offer her a piece of real fruit, though, or vegetable, and she pokes it, inspects it, and more often than not throws it on the floor. Forcefully. With a look on her face that more or less says, "Bring it." Laura is no shrinking violet. She may not have any identifiable words yet, but she'll read you a riot act nonetheless - just ask Tim, or the photographer at Sears Portrait Studio.

I've been doing this long enough to know that I simply need to keep offering things, that it can take 30-50 times before a child will choose to accept a food. But...UGH. It's so much easier to give her that cheese stick I know she loves, that she receives with applause and a darling smile.

I still cite potty training as the most distasteful part of parenting to date (haven't dealt with puberty yet), but feeding is not far behind it. Then again, I recall agonizing over whether or not Laura would ever learn to sleep in her crib, or through the night, and of course now take these things for granted. This one may take longer, but we'll get there. I might have to break down and buy that mop my mom was nagging me about, though.