Rice facial

We thought we would try Eve on some semi-solids today, as a precursor to weaning. So I mixed some leftover breast milk with baby rice to make a watery, wallpaper paste-like, goo for Eve. We popped her into her high chair at breakfast with us.

The first issue was with the high chair. Eve chose to loll backwards, as if having a TV dinner in front of a rather good film, instead of sitting upright. The Boy was tasked with coming up with a way that we could make her sit up straight, so wedged a towel behind her, but then had to strap her in, making Eve look a little like a fighter pilot about to head off on a new mission. However, the stage (or rather, the tray) was set.

First she tried to eat the bowl itself. However, a cunning inventor had clearly come to the realisation that babies put everything into their mouths and put a sucker adapter on the bottom so it could stick in place on her tray. Aha, foiled that one. Then she decided that the spoon was ideal to chew to ease her teething, cue a bit of a battle with Mummy to extract the spoon long enough to put some food on it.

Finally, the spoon, with baby goo on it, made it's way into Eve's mouth. Where she promptly started to chew the spoon again and all of the baby rice went down her front. We tried again, same effect. On the third attempt Eve, clearly entranced with this new fun game, grabbed the spoon and tipped the whole lot over her face. And smiled.

By now the bib, and Eve's top were soaked, she had baby rice all over her face, I had it all over me, and the Boy was laughing from behind the video camera at both of us.

And then, because she is our daughter, she figured out that this was food and when I next put the spoon near her mouth she grabbed it and sucked off all the baby rice. And kept sucking, getting more and more annoyed that unlike my boob, it didn't automatically replenish with food once she swallowed. She got a bit angry, shouted at the spoon and me, and after another small battle gave me the spoon long enough to get more baby rice into it before she grabbed it and sucked at it again. This scenario was repeated a few more times until she finally figured out that she had to wait a bit between mouthfuls so alternated between sucking the spoon and sucking her thumb (which was covered in baby rice so another food source by this point).

I don't think much went in, but she seemed to take to food like, well, I do. A success I think!