What do you do with a baby who will only swallow soft food, but refuses to be spoon fed. Oh, unless it’s pudding. Pudding can be spooned in, but not savoury or breakfast. We have had some success with pasta dishes, but Bernard can’t eat pasta all the time, can he? Yesterday I gave him dollops of mixed bean pate with cream cheese and millet, but he flung that far and wide.
Jarfood is no longer an option, unless you catch him on an unusually compliant day, or it’s lumpy enough to be scooped up in baby handfuls and wiped across his face, with some of it occasionally going in.
Finger food usually has to be soft; anything hard (like breadsticks) or lumpy (like any large pieces that he bites off) gets spat out, sometimes spectacularly.
If the food is sticky enough, B will sometimes play with the spoon, holding it by the foody end and licking the handle. We persist with this, because the only sensible route seems to be to wait patiently for him to learn how to use it himself. If a parent waves a spoon anywhere near his face, he screeches.
Fiddly finger food meals take a long, long time and a lot of newspaper on the floor, and for these reasons I prefer to feed him at home, before and after his afternoon with the childminder. Today he has a one-off full Tuesday with her, and apparently he will be taking lunch in the Asda cafe. Hahahahaha good luck with that, childminding lady.
Our two fairly early on figured out if they screeched they got a mouthful anyway, but then we were cruel parents and also lucky that they never really seemed to work out they could spit it back out.
Then again, they got their own back when they were older… JUST at the point we were feeling smug at how well they ate and what a good diet they had, they went all picky. Allegedly they grow out of this stage. Eldest is 6 years old and we’re still waiting…