Ooo Nasty

A group of mums of which I am a part have a little evening get together every now and again. We leave the men in charge of the kiddies and meet up with grand ideas of spiritual discussion and intelligent debate.
Ha ha! Of course we spend most of the time eating snacks and talking about the funny and disgusting things our lovely little ones have been up to.
As I prepared to leave the last time Andy pointed out that it was a good thing I was going to a mummies get together as they'd totally understand the crusted dribble on my shoulder. Ah the delights of small children! The things we put up with from babies and little ones - just because they are babies and little ones.
How many times has Daniel scored a direct hit during a nappy change? Rather a lot, although he's usually managed to get himself as well, not to mention the rug which will never be the same again. Luckily it was a cheap one from IKEA and we'll probably replace it soon. Perhaps. If we get round to it. On second thoughts, perhaps we'd better wait till he's reliably potty trained.
By the end of the day Daniel is usually quite well crusted in snot, dribble, left over food and whatever else he happens to have got near during the day. When Joseph was a baby I used to wonder why some women bathed their babies so often as he didn't seem to get that dirty. Daniel has educated me. Joseph wasn't one for being sick, Daniel wasn't one for keeping it down. It was the look of pride on his face as the cheesy white geyser poured out of him.
Before weaning Daniel used to get a sticky grey coating over him by the end of the day. If we didn't bathe him, and I confess I wasn't always energetic to manage it, he would get a strange dark grey slime accumulating in the folds of his chins.
If he's sick now then it's instant bath time. Baby food looks much the same coming back as it does going down. It's the carrot.
Daniel is starting to get to grips with feeding himself a few things now. This leads to a variety of odd things. Food finds itself wedged and stuck in all sorts of places, but I found cheerios in our bed yesterday and that was disappointing as they'd been long enough to go soft. We found cheerios on the floor this morning too, which wasn't too odd except we weren't at home at the time.
Daniel likes dried fruit a lot too. It sticks to him just like the cheerios do and falls off in a similar manner. However, if you tread on a cheerio all you get is a bit of dust and perhaps a small start from the crunch. If you step on a sultana you get a sticky mess on the floor and your foot. There's nothing like small children for producing sticky messes.

Melba Toast

Ah weaning and all its many delights!
I've sniffed around the idea of baby lead weaning and come to the conclusion that it's all very well if your baby is a well coordinated and compliant little person. If they're a scamp of the highest order with an inbuilt ability to know if something is food or not and then reject it out of hand - then you're in for trouble.
Joseph didn't want to lead the weaning. He would describe himself as 'energy efficient' - that's lazy to the rest of us. He always preferred to have puree shoveled in to his mouth by someone else and would still now if we gave him the chance. Daniel likes pureed food, fruity flavours especially. He is not remotely interested in feeding himself unless it's a biscuit and I'm not planning on giving him many of those as even the ones specifically for babies seem to have a lot of sugar.
I had a look on a baby lead weaning website a while ago and it suggested egg noodles were a good thing to try as they're soft to chew and easy to get hold of. Joseph decorated himself in them but wouldn't eat them and Daniel cried. I tried soft bread with a little butter - Joseph ate a little and squished the rest, Daniel cried. Cheese - Joseph doesn't like eating cheese even now and Daniel cried. If he has the merest suggestion I might be expecting him to feed himself he cries and then will often try and get rid of the food. Some things he will eat happily off the spoon, but will never have a go himself unless he knows it's very sweet.
Well, there is one exception. At Christmas dinner I like to push the boat and pull all of the stops very much out. I make an effort with food that I would not have the time or inclination for the rest of the year. We had a starter, smoked mackerel pâté served on Melba toast. It went down pretty well, even the children ate some of the pâté which impressed me. Daniel got given a bit of Melba toast to play with as he'd had his lunch of mixed mush and needed to be kept entertained as we ate.
He ate the Melba toast. None of his teeth had broken properly, but he still ate it. He then managed to hoover up all of the broken bits of toast we hadn't thought fit to serve. One filled up baby! He wasn't too keen the following day, but that's when the bronchiolitis was kicking in and what little he was eating ended up coming back.
After another week of failed self feeding attempts I opened up an unused pack of Melba toast from Christmas and gave him a bit to stop him crying while I sorted the dishwasher out and made his tea. When I say 'made his tea' I mean getting the half eaten jar of food from his lunch box.
He ate the Melba toast with some gusto, I only found a few dropped pieces adhering to his clothes later. It was when I was returning the lack to the cupboard that I noticed the nutritional traffic lights on the side, specifically the salt warning, resplendent in red, telling you nicely that you'd better not eat this product unless you really fancy a touch of high blood pressure.
Oh that's soooo brilliant! Put in a deep sarcastic tone here, oh yes. The only savoury food he's been prepared to feed himself I can't give him. Babies shouldn't eat much at all in the way of salt as it can damage their kidneys. That's just great. More sarcasm there.
Back to purees then. Sigh.

Go On, Treat Yourself

Joseph got a treat today. The pack said 'no artificial colours or preservatives'. Makes it sound almost healthy!

He was lucky to get it, I wanted to see some truly good behaviour before he could have a treat after what happened yesterday.
I was anticipating that Monday would be a hard day. Andy was back at work having had nearly two weeks off for Christmas and New Year. Joseph rather likes having his Daddy around and his happiness sometimes results in over exuberant bad behaviour. It's not as bad as his sulky and unhappy behaviour so I was preparing for the worst.
I was wrong - or so I thought. He was quiet-ish and well behaved and didn't really protest when I asked him to play upstairs quietly for a bit so I could settle Daniel off for a nap.
He was lulling me into a false sense of security of course. Keep Mummy happy, don't let her get suspicious that I'm planning the Great Sweet Heist.....

We keep a bag of skittles in his room on a high shelf for reward or bribery purposes. Mostly bribery. Joseph, having got a little bit better at eating his dinner, has had a bit of a growth spurt. He's also been using that little noggin for good effect.
I don't quite know how he managed to reach them as it happened during his quiet play time, I also don't know how he managed to get them down without making any noise as I wasn't aware of anything and Daniel slept well. I was unaware of his sweet gorging actions until Andy played with him in his room that evening and discovered the empty packet evidence.
So, no sweets. Nothing to bribe him with. He got dressed as usual this morning and then was rather sad when he didn't get his usual reward. I reminded him why and he was still sad.
But, having said that he was quite a good boy this morning. He chose what to have in his sandwich for preschool - cucumber. Usually he has cheese, but he wanted something different today. I was advised to let him make his own lunch as he'd be more likely to eat it that way. I experimented with this one lunch time at my Mums house. The net result was that all he had on his plate was a bun with nothing on it. Nothing at all, not even butter.

I was expecting him to come back with most of the lunch untouched as per usual and probably a warning about him not behaving well again.
I was wrong on both counts. No bad behaviour comments, and the only thing left in his lunch box was the small chocolate bar. Surprised, perhaps even a little shocked and very pleased we went to a café and he had a little treat.
No artificial colours or preservatives. Nothing to worry about except the massive amounts of sugar and fat you find in Milky Way Magic Stars.