Solid Food Challenge

Here's the way a typical feeding goes--especially if it's anything other than peas (which are, what you might say is her "favorite", if by "favorite" you mean "that which doesn't make her retch and shiver with disgust"). You approach her with a spoonful of, say, pears (which is what she had this morning). I do either the patented "Here Comes The Airplane" game, complete with "VROOOM!" sound effects, or the "Here Comes The Choo Choo" (which she prefers) complete with "CHUG, CHUG, CHUG, CHUG, CHOOOOO! CHOOOOO!" sound effects. Then I shove a spoonful of food in her mouth. She promptly swishes it around in her mouth and then re-deposits down her chin. I've learned how to circumvent this problem now though, so I just keep the spoon against her lips, so that when she spits the food out, it lands right back on the spoon, at which time I spoon it right back into her mouth. This pattern occurs about 5 times per spoonful and by about the 4th spoonful, the food is about 98% diluted with her saliva. It's not the best table manners, but what can you do?

Kevin tried a different approach with her the other day. One of the things that she does while you're feeding her is put her hands in her mouth as soon as she gets a good mouthful of food. Kevin decided to forego the spoon and just put the food on her hands and let her suck it off (such a "Dad" way of doing things, eh?). You can imagine how that turned out. I'm still scraping dried sweet potatoes off of the breakfast table.