Adventures in Baby Feeding

"I trusted you!"

LO is not an easy baby. Just ask me every night around 8:00 p.m. after I've been trying to convince the child for about an hour that sleeping is just a peachy thing to do and I know I've got another good two to three more hours of fight left to go before the Sandman wins.

Thankfully, however, LO's spirited refusal to do things that will be good for him does not extend to the subject of food. The child is thrilled to try pretty much any food Mama and Daddy are eating. Sometimes he is vehement about asserting his rights to said food, whether or not Mama and Daddy have any intention of sharing said food with LO. The upside of this is that we can get LO to try anything, as long as we eat it first. I think he takes a page from kings who had poison tasters. "You refuse to eat lumpy gunk from a box with a smiling baby on it? Well then, hell no, I don't want that. I'll take a slice of that pizza, though. No, the big slice."

Unfortunately, LO's adventurous culinary attitude has led him astray. After months of the child successfully navigating spicy barbecued chicken, tongue-tickling char-broiled T-bones, and cheerios dipped in salsa (well, that last one was my compromise since tortilla chips are a choking hazard but the child REALLY wanted some salsa), I was thinking that there was nothing the little man wouldn't eat. So on Saturday, after I made a delicious tofu vindaloo dish over jasmine rice, I separated out some tofu, some carrots and some cauliflower for the young man to enjoy.

Without hesitation, he picked up a tofu piece with his perfected pincer grasp, and began the arduous process of trying to get some part of it actually in his mouth. It took several moments after he succeeded before the following emotional transformation occurred:

"Yum! Mama and Daddy food!"

"Wait, what is that aftertaste?"

"It burns! I do not like this at all!"

"Why, Mama, why?

"Here, you eat it."

LO refused to eat any food that I handed him for the rest of the day. Once you've broken that food trust, it is impossible to regain it. Unless Mama happens to be eating an ice cream sandwich, and then all is forgiven.