a little mess

Our week of eating cereal has been going well. Cole has gobbled up his tablespoon of rice cereal in about 45 seconds every afternoon.

Currently I'm reading, "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron and besides great homemade baby food recipes, the book discusses the psychology of eating for babies. I know. . .listen to me. . ."the psychology of eating. . ." Well, it's interesting. To me anyway. So back to my point. . .Ruth says it's important to let babies feed themselves. And I thought - yeah, that is important. . . I'll start doing that. (Let me remind you that I'm a first-time mom and really have no hands on experience behind anything that I think is important. )

So I hand him the spoon. Because Ruth says it's important. Ruth also said it might be a little messy, but it was worth it, and that if I couldn't take a little mess. . .motherhood might not be my bag. And I can take a mess. . .so I put some cereal in the spoon before I handed it to him.

I'm sure those of you that either have children, or thought about giving Cole a spoonful of cereal for more than 30 seconds are already ahead of me on this one. . .and you can imagine the "little mess" that erupted all over my kitchen.

Cereal ended up about 8 feet from where we were sitting in every direction. That includes on the windows as well as the floors, walls, fridge, the mom and a cat that was too close watching the action. Cereal ended up in every orifice of Cole's face. . .eyes, ears, nose. . .not so much in the mouth. Cereal was down his back and somehow mine (!?!) and when I picked him up to take him straight to a bath - there was cereal on his bum, too. And I only mixed up 1 tablespoon of cereal!

Okay, okay - so it was a total mess but once I'd gotten the sticky stuff out of my hair, I figured Ruth was right. Cole had a blast and was really working hard to get the spoon in his mouth. He'd get all excited and start talking when he got the spoon in his mouth (thus adding to a majority of the cereal spitting). So it was worth a "little mess." And about $4 in Lysol disinfecting wipes.

Not too sure I'll repeat our eating lesson anytime soon though. . . so here are some pictures: