TMI Tuesday: Hungry Baby

The whole back and forth during meal time is something that we expected to encounter with our some but we were happily unaware of many of the factors that come into play during these parts of our daily routine. Our son can be fickle at times when it comes to what he wants to eat. Sometimes he doesn’t like the taste of something while other time he simply prefers having something else, something he knows he likes better than what is being offered. It is a back and forth at times but something that we remain cognizant of as we don’t want his pickiness to persist.

However, lately there has been a different issue that has arisen during meal times that has him turning his nose up at certain foods being offered. There actually three reasons that we have discovered for his disagreement actually. The first is that he has so many teeth coming in that there are some foods that do not agree with swollen gums and new oral protrusions. The texture has to be just right at times. The second sometimes relates to the first as he is now preferring larger pieces of food… too small and he will sometimes refuse to eat, too big and we are cleaning up more than pieces dropped on the floor. Too hot or cold will also result in the same kind of reaction. I guess you could call all of these things contributing factors to the Goldilocks conundrum.  

When all of these things are at play at the same time it can make for quite the difficult meal and usually ends with various pieces of edible confetti strewn about the kitchen floor. Other times everything goes as ‘planned’ or at least pretty close and he stuffs his face like he is late for a meeting or something. The latter is particularly funny when we give him a whole cereal bar and he proceeds to devour it just as fast if not faster than most adults.

Overall, we have learned to not get in the way of a hungry baby as there is a possibility that you might lose a finger in the process. Mmmmm, meaty! In fact, we try to give him his space once we put food on his tray as there are times when he won’t eat if someone is watching him. This works out for us as we can either get a few things done in the kitchen or, gasp, eat dinner at the same time. After all, that is the goal that we are working toward as we want this to be a time spent with family around the dinner table.

TMI Tuesday: Holiday Hangover

Having spent the last week and a half at home with my wife, it was quite the change yesterday when we put our son in the car and had him spend the day at daycare. While he has been getting up at the same time regardless of the plans for that particular day, the morning routine was a little more hectic than it had been the previous week which didn’t really phase our son as he continued to take his time savoring every breakfast Cheerio. By the time we got his coat on, he knew that we were going back to our usual routine and he actually seemed to be okay with the switch.

Heading out in the morning wasn’t that much of a change as we try to get him out of the house regularly. However, when he is home all day, he works at a much more leisurely pace when it comes to eating. He tends to pick for at least 30 minutes rather than simply shoving food into his mouth as fast as he can (the only exception to this would be his Gerber tropical fruit melts). While we did head out the door a little later than we wanted (I know, what a shock) we were at least able to speed him up a little bit and I guess you could say meet in the middle.

We are very lucky in that our son enjoys being at daycare and enjoys being social in general. Of course, he also likes being with mommy and daddy so by the end of the day we had to make sure to give him a little more attention than usual so that he could get his fix before bed. This can sometimes be an issue if he either goes to bed early or his daddy has to be out late but I am usually there to play with him and hold him a little bit before he begins his evening procedures.

There was a bit of a hiccup yesterday with his sleep (or lack thereof to be more accurate) but that will return to normal over time. So we are back to our normal schedule and thankfully it was a pretty smooth transition that first day. Hopefully things continue and he sleeps a little better during day two. Sometimes, transitions just take time and we have to be a little more patient until we can shake the holiday hangover and get used to the old daily routine.