Food Fight!

Wow, has it really been almost a month since I last posted? I'm sorry! Things have been crazy busy around here, both at work and at home. By the time I get home from work and we get Junior fed, bathed, and in bed, I am ready to crash. Of course after he's down we still have to get everything ready for daycare the next day: make bottles, pack food, make our own dinner, and I still have to pump.

It wasn't always so time crunched, but Junior's dinner time has become slightly more challenging lately. Okay, fine. It's become all out warfare. Greyden was, and still is, a good eater. But only when he wants to be. So dinner time has become a power struggle between Greyden and Daddy. It has also become a power struggle between Daddy and Mommy. I'm in the camp that says breastmilk is supposed to be his main source of nutrition until he's 1. So if he decides that he would rather study the art of gravity with his broccoli or brush up on his physics by launching pureed sweet potatoes across the room via his spoon, then so be it. Kevin on the other hand is in the camp that says he needs his solid foods so that he'll sleep better (although so far we haven't been able to verify that claim). Kevin is also the one who ends up bathed in pureed zucchini and broccoli when Greyden decides that he'd rather blow raspberries than swallow. Coincidence? I think not. 

Of course his daycare teachers just RAVE about what a good eater he is. At first I thought they were messing with me. Nope, turns out he'll put away pretty much whatever they put in front of him. So why are mommy and daddy having to make the broccoli dance in front of his face in a worthless attempt to get him to notice it? I'm sure part of it has to do with the circling sharks beneath his high chair dogs distracting him, since he always needs to know what they are doing. While I'm content to sit back and watch the food fly (Harley and Bella are big fans of this technique as well), Daddy gets stressed out and tries other tactics which don't usually do much to help get Greyden to eat, but do result in other parental discoveries. For example, we've learned that by putting Greyden's Gerber cereal puffs right in or under his table food, he'll go from his normal eating technique of picking up his food with his whole hand and shoving it into his mouth, to the most precise and perfected pincer grasp you can imagine, lest he should *gasp* pick up a piece of his table food along with it. And even though he won't touch his own dinner lately, he is more than happy to partake of the dog's dinner as we discovered last week. I thought I had caught him in time and removed the two kibbles from his hands and the one that was hanging half out of his mouth. About 5 minutes later I realized he was still drooling like a faucet. I stuck my finger in his mouth and managed to remove the final kibble. Mommy fail.



Greyden at his Graduation/Going Away Party at daycare. They got him a mini-cupcake. Maybe this is why he's so willing to eat for them.



I'm hoping he really gets the hang of the table food soon though because I plan to quit breastfeeding when he hits a year old. And let me tell you, I'm READY. If you would have asked me about it a few months ago I'd have told you that I can't imagine not doing it. Then 9 months hit and I was suddenly ready to be done, which is a relief because I was starting to get visuals of me showing up at Greyden's 3rd grade classroom to feed him. I'm slightly nervous about it because I have a feeling weaning him isn't going to be as easy as I would like it to be. For one thing, he does not seem to have any intention of giving up the boob. He's much more efficient than he used to be so it only takes him a few minutes on each side, but when he's done, he's done. No more laying on my lap and gazing adoringly at me. Nope, he's trying to sit up, grab my hair and earrings, play with the ties on my hoodie, stick his hand in my mouth and down my shirt, and looking behind him (without letting go of course) to see what the dogs and cats are doing. For a while I thought that his sitting up when he was finished was his way of showing me that he was done, so I couldn't understand why he was getting so upset when I would put him down. Last week when I was distracted and didn't put him down right away he ended up faceplanted into my other boob. It was then that I realized that he wasn't sitting up because he was finished, he was sitting up because he was switching sides for me. I might be showing up to third grade after all.


The end of breastfeeding means the end of many things, the most important being my fridge at work the last physical bond of me being the sole provider for my son. Okay, fine. The fridge. I fought hard to get that thing in my office so that I wouldn't have to haul my cookies to a different floor 3 times a day and I'm not looking forward to it going away. That means I'm going to have to start drinking room temperature water again, which was fine pre-pregnancy, but post-pregnancy I HAVE to have ice cold water. Room temperature (which was my preference before) now makes me want to gag. Quitting breastfeeding also means that Greyden's immune system will no longer be of the highest caliber and that we'll now need to worry about him getting sick. Oh wait. Maybe we'll actually have to worry about him getting well. This could actually be a good thing. Just an FYI - The person who said that breastfeeding is necessary to ensure a strong immune system is totally smoking crack in his or her spare time. How do I know this? Maybe because today's lunch hour was spent picking up his 267th antibiotic prescription.



Greyden's first wagon ride!