More on food...

I am so darned proud of my little boy! Watching him explore and learn must be one of the most marvelous experiences of my life. And he's so very good at it!

The past month of witnessing Jonah transition from exclusively breast fed to eating some solids on a daily basis has been especially fun and rewarding. Although our initial attempts to spoon feed him were pretty much a dismal failure, our follow-up attempts to let him feed himself have been a smashing success. Jonah now eats completely on his own, each meal a variety of dishes cut (but almost never puréed) from whole foods and, often, from our own dinner plates.

Each meal progresses in more or less the following way:

Jonah takes a break between
bites of stewed chicken and carrot.

We place a couple of foods in front of Jonah. Yesterday, for instance, he had carrots, potatoes, and chicken, picked from a stew Bryan and I had made for ourselves. Jonah starts by playing with the food in front of him. Usually this involves a bit of mashing and throwing. After 30 second or so, he decides it's safe to put some in his mouth. He grabs with one hand, maybe trying a raking motion first. This works well if his target is a decent-sized stick of carrot or wedge of banana, for example, that he can munch from one end of his fist. However, since Jonah, thankfully, hasn't yet mastered the art of simply shoving food from a fist into his face, this works less well with smaller pieces or more mashed up foods (which almost any stick or wedge will eventually become). These, he'll soon realize, require a more delicate grip, so he'll carefully put down what he's grabbed and reorganize his efforts. Over the past couple of weeks, he's really perfected his pincer grasp (grabbing using just thumb and forefinger), so that grip now comes in handy when he's trying to eat small bits. And even if that fails the first time around--usually because his food is sliding stubbornly along his plate as he tries to grasp it--he's learned to grab the food in one fist and pinch it out of that hand with the other. In this way, last night at least, carrots disappeared, chicken was ravenously scarfed up, and potatoes--well, admittedly potatoes were largely ignored.

But that's okay. I love that Jonah is now relishing his food, and I love, love, love watching him learn what he is capable of. As his daddy said, "He's so deliberate. It's clear it's not all easy for him, but he knows what he wants to do, and he's so determined and methodical about figuring it out." What mom would not be proud?