We've always taken Jamie to cafes and restaurants with us, and he usually behaves himself extremely well. He doesn't really need a high chair any more, but we give him the choice and sometimes he prefers to have one, possibly because on a normal dining chair he has to keep switching between sitting and kneeling to comfortably reach his food and drink. The novelty of outdoor tables was a source of endless fascination to him this summer. He also rediscovered a love of veggie sticks which has to get me at least fifty Smug Mummy points - he went off them for a while once he no longer needed them as teething aids.
This picture marks a great leap forward in Jamie's eating abilities.
Up to the age of six months, Jamie was exclusively breastfed. Then we started to introduce purees on a spoon. We had a rhythm going where we would load the spoon and pass it to Jamie, and he would pilot it to his mouth or thereabouts (as in this post, it was messy but it worked).
Next was finger foods, and then something unexpected happened - he started refusing to hold the spoon and would do any amount of gymnastics to just get his mouth directly to it instead. I consulted the weaning expert at the children's centre and she reassured us that some kids were like this. Having got to grips with shoving finger food straight in his mouth he was regarding the spoon as an unnecessary complication in the eating process. But she seemed quite relaxed about it and said we should just keep eating with cutlery in front of him, let him have the spoon if he wanted it even if only to play with, and not worry.
Well, that's easier said than done, but it seems to have worked. Last week, after several months, Jamie finally reached for the spoon again. What's more, we don't even have to load it any more. He can have his bowl, he can scoop up his food, he can put it in his own mouth at his own pace. He's just suddenly got it, all at once.
Here is Jamie having his afternoon snack. We sit at the table for most meals, but snack by definition is supposed to be smaller, quicker, and for want of a better word, less formal.
We are having some success getting him to sit on his muslin cloth for snack, although as a result he is developing a technique of scooting about on his backside - for all that he can't speak yet, he is clearly communicating "but mum! I am sitting down!"
Sigh. I finished a full year of once-a-week photos for a 52 Project blog of Jamie, said that I intended to do it again for 2017, then completely forgot to do the first week.
With that in mind, I felt this would be an appropriate starter photo.
It's been a while since we had a food picture, so here is Jamie with an apple.
Where practical, I like to prepare Jamie's food at the table where he can see what's going on. He can't eat an apple in this form, but I usually let him handle it for a while before we cut it into slices and share it. I admit that I also enjoy the idea that a single apple is one of my 5-a-day, but that the same apple shared between me and Jamie is one of the 5-a-day for each of us.
Just a cute silly one this week, of Jamie playing his spoon like a flute.
He likes mealtimes. I get a bit twitchy - current command is to just let the baby make a mess and act like that's okay, lest they end up with terrible hangups about food. On the other hand, it is nice to be able to eat a meal with him without constantly mopping him or making it a battlefield. We also seem to have dodged the "we always have to have (insert children's programme) on during mealtimes," and "the baby will only sit in the high chair for fifteen minutes tops," so there must be something in it.
Efforts to introduce Jamie to "solid foods" - a term which at this stage pretty much means anything more solid than milk - are continuing.
In this picture Jamie is wearing an Ella's Kitchen Spinach, Peas and Pears puree underneath his first taste of strawberry yoghurt. Strangely, or perhaps not, he seems to prefer the spinach.
There's not much to report, really. His spoon skills are doing nicely. My policy at present is that I will keep loading the spoon until he stops reaching for it and shoving it in his mouth, but he can only have bowls once they are emptied. He has been given finger foods - overcooked and cooled sticks of carrot, apple, broccoli, etc - but these are so far being treated with extreme suspicion.
To be honest there have been far more exciting things going on this week as Jamie has really nailed rolling and continues to experiment with his commando crawl. The trouble is that I don't get much opportunity to photograph that stuff. If he's not asleep or harnessed into something (sling, pushchair, high chair, car seat) then he's a bit of a blur. Maybe I need to ask the PAs to start doing photographs?
Well, from sitting in the high chair, we've moved along to our first tastes of food.
This is sweet potato.
Food is apparently a hit for Jamie, although more as an art material than as nourishment at this stage. He can and does propel his own spoon to his mouth, but while most of the puree makes it to his mouth it doesn't all stay there. Scooping food onto a spoon is also currently beyond his powers but we don't mind helping with that. Finger food, such as slightly overcooked broccoli, is regarded with suspicion even when Mummy is eating it too, and has thus far been rejected.
