It's not Alaska's fault she hates solid food. It's my fault.
Give me a blow-out diaper and two wipes, I can make it happen. Let a kiddo puke all over my clothes and allow only one burp clothe. Take all the pots and pans out of the cupboards and make me pick them up whilst having a pounding headache. But do not make me clean up a baby from a messy meal given a hose and seventeen wash clothes. I can't do it.
Seriously, armed with two wash clothes, what do you logically do first? Clean the high chair tray to prevent more mess, clean the kid to get them out faster, wipe the hands, wipe the face, wipe the pants that somehow got pureed green beans on them? And what about all that food that dropped in their lap and slid out of the highchair? Just where does that go if you have no dog? So many things to do at once and I am no expert.
Not to mention, this takes time. It takes a lot of time to get a spoon into a baby's mouth, have them slurp half of it while the other half runs down their chin, scoop that off their chin and give them another spoonfull while dodging the little hands that want the spoon. And then all the nodding, hand waving and general wiggling that goes along with the process is not my forte. Not at all.
We were sitting down 5x a day sometimes to get through one jar and it was wearing me out. We were on the brink of snacking on cheerios and eating bottles forever. I couldn't stomach the inefficiency of the process nor the mess. Those two together does not make a happy momma over here.
But luckily two little angels stepped in. We had house guests for a week while their dad/husband hunted in the great Wasatch mountains and they love, loved feeding Alaska her food. The messier she got, the cuter she was. The longer it took for her to get down her breakfast, lunch and dinner the better because that meant more one-on-one play time with the girl who was feeding her. And any small victory was a victory none-the-less. I still remember Geni saying, "Oh! She ate half the spoonfull!" And that was just enough encouragement for the spoon to continue its path toward Alaska's mouth.
Watching their enthusiasm for feeding Alaska was contagious and I learned a few things. You gotta be quick. Lightning quick. You've got a trap door that isn't going to stay open for long and you never know exactly when it's going to open. You've got hands to dodge, but luckily grown-up arms are stronger then hands and if you don't mind a little rice cereal on your sleeve you can ward the bullies off. You've gotta mix those nasty green beans with applesauce to get them down and those carrots are pretty powerful as well. You've gotta reach around sometimes and stick food in her mouth while she's preoccupied looking at the floor wondering what's down there. You've gotta keep feeding her, around her fingers she may have in her mouth, around the other spoon she's got in her mouth and around those front teeth that are coming in. As long as she's not crying she'll open her mouth for that spoon.
Things are going much smoother now and we're going beyond cheerios and cheese slices. We've got pureed baby foods in the bag and marching on. It wasn't Alaska fault she couldn't get that stuff down past her waving hands, it was me. And now that I am not so paranoid about getting a little messy things are going smoother. Although I still don't know what to tackle first with the wash cloth. Face, clothes, tray. I have taken to washing her hands in the sink and not even bothering with the wash cloth for getting the food jam between those baby fingers.
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