The Cheerio Incident

I love food. And eating. I especially like eating the food (as opposed to just admiring it from a distance). I even sought out a career that allowed me to spend time getting paid to pick out food for other people. So you can imagine my disappointment when the time came to feed Edie food other than formula or breastmilk and she didn't like it.

When I tell people that Edie doesn't like food, they often ask, "How can you tell?" To which I respond, "Because she makes a horrid face and after one bite (which she always spits out) she typically won't open her mouth again and turns her face away when she sees the spoon coming". Not subtle my child, not subtle. Since starting her on solids about a month ago, she has rejected sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, mango, yogurt, bananas, and homemade quinoa rice cereal. The most popular item was bananas, but even that she seemed to accept as more of a concession to make me feel better. She certainly didn't enjoy them. Here she is eating said bananas:

SO serious.

On Monday we went out to dinner with another family . They have a daughter that is 6 days older than Edie. When we sat down to dinner, the Mom pulled out a bag of Cheerios and starting feeding them to her daughter who happily accepted them like a baby bird. I was shocked. Edie won't even let me put a spoonful of watered down bananas in her mouth and this kid is munching on Cheerios?! The Mom suggested that maybe Edie just didn't want soupy food, maybe she wanted something with a little more texture. Something in me knew it was a bad idea, but I was buoyed by the look of glee on this other baby's face while happily eating solids. So I gave Edie a Cheerio. She mulled it over while it slimed around in her mouth, looking mostly grossed out. Then she must have tried to swallow it. And it made her vomit. Like, a lot. I caught it all in my hand. Did I mention we were out to dinner with another family? In public? Thankfully these other people also have a child (two in fact) and so their reaction was to grab handfuls of napkins and throw them at me rather than be totally grossed out.

So the point of this story is not just to tell you that Edie hates food. Or to gross you out by telling you about barf. It is to tell you that after The Cheerio Incident I stopped trying to feed Edie for a few days. But tonight, family came to Seattle and made us dinner. Avocado was in the dinner, so on a whim I asked if we could save a piece to try and feed Edie. I pureed it with a spoon and added a bunch of formula to water it down. And Edie not only ate it, but actually opened her mouth for it. MULTIPLE TIMES. Could it be that this Ghandi-style food strike is coming to an end?