R is a pretty happy eater. She took to solid foods quite readily and eats just about anything we give her, including Thai curry (at least until the spice built up and she started screaming). She loves ramen noodles, steamed carrots, peach, beef, chicken – the list just gets longer every day.
For about the first three months she was content to be fed by spoon. She’d bob up and down happily before diving in like a bird to a worm to snatch the food from the end of the spoon. It is an adordable sight, though one that is getting rarer.
You see, for the last week she has been insisting more and more on feeding herself. While this is wonderful for a lot of reasons it can also be frustrating. Her manual dexterity has not developed enough for her to consistently get food from tray to mouth, so most of it ends up on the floor. The result of this is that it takes an interminably long time for her to eat enough to be satisfied. Yesterday we spent an hour and a half on lunch, which included almost fifteen minutes to drink two ounces of milk. I was so over it. Then, of course, when my wife was feeding her dinner she just ate from the spoon and was finished in half an hour.
On the advice of anther stay at home dad I decided to take a different tact today – I let her feed herself entirely independently for breakfast. I put a big bowl of oatmeal in front of her and let her have at it. Our dining room and living room are one big room so I was able to leave her at it and go practice the piano while keeping an eye on her from there. It was wonderful. Lunch was similar, although I sat with her the whole time since the food was more solid than oatmeal. However, I did just put portions on her plate and let her have at it. I ate my lunch and did some work on my iPad and we were both happy. She still didn’t get enough to be satisfied on just solids, so I ended with a bottle. Thankfully it didn’t take fifteen minutes to finish this time.
I’m sure over the next few days we’ll find a rhythm that works for both of us, she’ll get better at holding onto her food until she gets it to her mouth, and mealtime will shorten. Until, I’m told, the throwing starts. Not particularly looking forward to that but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
