NOT DIGGIN' THIS WHOLE FOOD THING

When I took Nathan in for his 4 month check a few weeks ago, the last thing on my mind was getting the go ahead to start solids. With all my other monkeys the go date was always 6 months, not 4.

Why the change? They are always changing things.

Messy rice cereal mixed with formula, mashed up peas, sweet potatoes, applesauce, bananas.... The stuff that you put into your darling little babies mouth only to have them blow raspberries moments after and splatter it all over you and any walls in the near vicinity. You know the stuff. Oh the fun of starting solids.

I was told that I could wait until 6 months to start solids if I didn't want to bother with it right now, but for some odd reason I felt an immense sense of guilt for not offering them to my Nathan. Against my better judgment, I ignored my guilt for 2 very long weeks. Every time he cried after having a bottle I imagined him saying "Mom, Dr. Morrissey said I could have food, and you are not giving it to me because you are just plain old lazy and don't want to deal with the mess. You are such a bad Mommy!" I would stare at the food I had bought for him the day after the Dr. gave me the go ahead. The food that had been sitting there ever since then because of my lack of interest in actually feeding it to him. I started convincing myself that maybe Nathan was right, I was a bad mom. [Yes, I let my imagination get away from me from time to time.] So I decided it was time to give in and give my baby what he wanted. So last night I went into that cupboard, dusted off a jar of peas, put Nathan in his highchair and gave him his very first taste of food.

And let me tell you, it turns out that it wasn't what he wanted at all.

Don't get me wrong, he was open minded to the whole idea. I even gave him the spoon. He took some time to check it out, licked it a few times....

But it was definitely a no go. He didn't like it.

At all.

Maybe it was the peas, or maybe it was that he just was not ready to start solids quite yet. I like to think it was the later of those two options, so I am just going to go with it. That makes it a whole lot easier for me to put that baby food back into the cupboard for a month or two without feeling an ounce of guilt.

This makes me happy, and I think it makes Nathan quite happy too.