This was a large step for all of us. At the sixth month, we took Jonah to the doctor’s office and he gave the ok to give Jonah something other than formula. For some strange reason, we were fired up about this. It was like the doctor had told us we could now collect $25 with every diaper we changed or something. Or that we were guaranteed free college for Jonah or that we could all immediately go out for a steak dinner. We couldn’t control ourselves, mostly because we had no idea what was ahead.
We did know
that feeding him more “solid” food translated into more work and more mess, but
we didn’t care.
We just
knew it was more!
We were
elated that we could now feed Jonah rice cereal at 6:30am. And then we could switch to oatmeal. And then to green beans to squash to sweet
potatoes and then to carrots. Yes,
Carrots! And then, the big time. Yep, we knew that fruit was on the menu and
that Jonah was our main customer. WE
COULD NOT WAIT. We had lost our
ever-lovin’ minds. We had no clue!
The first
morning that Jonah was going to dine on rice cereal, I was up about twenty
minutes ahead, reading the directions on the rice cereal box like I was
responsible for constructing an H-Bomb or something.
I was
focused.
I
was ready.
I was clueless.
About the
time I had the bottle and the rice cereal mixed and ready to go, I heard
Jonah’s little grunt from the other room.
He was ready, too.
I decided
to leave his pajamas on because I thought that he’d be cold when I fed
him. I was thrilled because I put him in
the high chair for the first time and affixed the detachable tray with
expectation.
As I began
feeding him his bottle, I wondered how he was going to eat the food as
well. I didn’t know whether I should
give him the bottle first, then the cereal, the cereal first then the bottle or
an alternation of the two. I hadn’t been
where a baby had his first bite of real food, so I was in the dark.
I made it
up as I went along. Like most people, I
thought God made airplanes so that mothers and fathers could do the “airplane”
thing with the food. I gave it a
try. I made the sound, moved the spoon
full of rice cereal around in an airplane motion, and moved the spoon toward
his mouth.
He was
excited, he was motivated, and he was moving when I tried to feed him. The spoon got to his mouth just in time for
Jonah to move his head. My first attempt
at feeding Jonah real food resulted in an ear full of rice cereal.
Just
because I just spackled Jonah’s ear shut did not mean I was disappointed. Sure, I could have done it better, but this
was our first time. So I tried it
again. This time, my effort resulted in
Jonah snorting a little rice cereal. I
tried it again. In the hairline. I tried it again. Inside his pajamas. I tried it again. In his armpit. I tried it again. Between his toes.
So, I tried
another method. I like to call it the
bottle-and-stuff method of eating.
Here’s how it goes: I start Jonah
off on the bottle and then quickly take it out of his mouth with my left hand
when he begins a good rhythm. With my
right hand, I would stuff a spoon full of rice cereal in his mouth.
The
stuffing is the most important part, requiring the correct force with the
correct level of infiltration. In other
words, I needed to gauge how hard I was going to stick the spoon into his open
trap while noting how far in the spoon would go. If I didn’t put it in enough, Jonah wouldn’t
eat it. If I stuck the spoon too far
into the mouth, he would gag. Either
way, my boy was going to eat about half of what I prepared.
Which
brings me to a few revelations:
#1: The boy needs to eat naked from now
on. (If not fully naked, a diaper is the
most he should wear). That first time, I
left his pajamas on, and he came out looking like a furry rice ball. It got all over.
#2: Bath
time comes after feeding. Although he
could get messy with the bottle, the real food caused minor explosions of food
to fly all over. He didn’t so much eat
it as drool it. Bathing Jonah after he
eats is like showering after painting a room—you find paint on body parts that
you never thought you’d have paint on.
#3: This food isn’t really solid food. I’d never really looked at baby food, but I
noticed that no chewing is required.
That’s good, because home-boy only has gums at the moment and those
don’t really help with barbecued chicken breast.
#4: Just because it’s on his face does not
mean that I can’t scrape it off and put it back in his mouth. Same goes for food on his chest, arms and in
his belly button. Waste not, want
not. I had times where I was done with
the baby food jar, but I still scraped four or five spoonfuls off of his torso.
At this
rate, I needed Jonah’s skin to be able to absorb the rice cereal like a
Brazilian tree frog because his mouth was not cooperating. Jonah was not interested in eating this
stuff.
It wasn’t
the bottle or the boob, so he didn’t care about it.