We had a really good day today, all things considered. (Then again, I'm really not considering all things. That's just really beyond my scope here.) Did I get a little crabby? Yes. Impatient? Yes. But not terribly. Having a baby has really forced me to work on cultivating patience. It's a never-ending process.
But naps were good today. Moods were, with small exceptions, good. It was even sunny outside. Eating was good. Gavin is trucking away at solid foods. It's an uphill battle, but I think I helped lower the incline a bit today. Stacy and I both want Gavin to eat healthy foods. We are on the same page with that. We were, for example, both very excited when a friend of Stacy's mother gave us a baby food grinder as a shower present. I believe Stacy's mother's husband said I would probably put Twinkies in it, but this is not true. For one thing, I don't even eat Twinkies, for another I want my son to eat foods that are good for him. As I said, Stacy does, too. However, Stacy's idea of "good for him" doesn't coincide with what most people would also consider good. Per what we've read in the baby books, we started him out on rice cereal. I got him a box of Earth's Best powdered rice cereal because it has less shit in it ("shit" meaning perservatives, additives, ingredients we can't pronounce, etc.) than, say, Gerber. After he'd had rice cereal a few times and didn't break into hives or start projectile vomiting, we gave him oatmeal. Then Stacy was hell bent on his next solid food being barley. We couldn't find a ready-made barley baby cereal in the store, so Stacy bought some barley, cooked it up, and put it through the baby food grinder. It was, by far, the least popular menu choice so far in Baby Food Cafe. Stacy even ate some herself and agreed that it wasn't very good. Next up: sweet potato. Again, Stacy cooked up a sweet potato and into the grinder it went. It was better received than the barley, but not by much. Then came peas. Dried split peas from the health food store that Stacy cooked up, mashed up and presented to Gavin as if to say, "If you thought eating solid foods was unpleasant before, you haven't tasted anything yet). To say he didn't like them is an understatement. Oh, the faces he made. I took a little video of him eating it that I need to upload to YouTube still. He starts gagging at the end. Not choking, mind you, but gagging like, "WTF is this horrible sludge in my mouth?"
Meanwhile, I got him these little jars of Earth's Best bananas and apples (not mixed, but jars of each). But Stacy wanted to wait on the fruits until she'd shoveled more vegetables into his face. Because, she argued, fruits are sweet and practically dessert and if we give him desert first then he'll never want dinner.
Now, I come from a long line of people who do not consider fruit "dessert." Fruit is a health food and something you work into your diet so that you don't get colon cancer and die. It's not, like, punishment or anything, but present any Witkowski kid with a banana and say, "Here's your dessert" and we'll look at you like you're from another planet. A planet where people live longer and have better skin, probably, but another planet just the same. I'm not saying this is a good thing. I want Gavin to have a much better relationship with food than I do and I want him to enjoy eating food that's good for him. But I also want him to want to eat. As we've discussed, he's a boob man. If it was up to him he'd nurse until he was through college or at least high school. Getting him to drink breast milk from a bottle was a struggle, but now he's a champ. And when you're a champ you don't always want to jump into a new game. Stick with what you know, what you're famous for (Gavin isn't famous. This analogy makes no sense). In any case, when I put Gavin into his high chair today he was very unenthusiastic about it. He knew what was coming: terrible garbage on a spoon. He knew what he wanted: boobs. Enter disconnect. Sadness. Frustration.
Stacy said we can't give him a new food until 3 days after he's tried his last new food. This meant two more days on pea-ward lock down. But I remembered Rosemary saying something about how the three day rule was being questioned by some pediatricians or something like that. And I talked to Lisa on the phone and she said that she started her son out on fruits and things that taste good (i.e. sweet) because breast milk is sweet (it is, I tried it. One drop. Enough for me, thanks, but I can attest to the fact that it's sweet) and that's what babies are used to. Plus she wanted Brenden to have a positive association with solid foods so that now he'll eat anything you put in front of him because he thinks eating in his high chair is hella fun.
This is the opposite of how we'd been setting up Gavin's solid food experience. So instead of the dreaded peas I opened up the little jar of bananas and gave Gavin a tablespoon or so. He didn't love them, but he did open his mouth of his own free will when presented with the spoon fulls, and I think this is progress. I was worried that Stacy would be mad. I told Lisa I was going to blame it all on her. Luckily I didn't have to. Stacy wasn't mad and she agreed that Gavin needed to dig eating more than just breast milk because she can barely keep up with his supply what with the pumping and all. And so it is. And so it shall remain.
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