02.10.2023
my whole idea of baby food just got flipped upside down over here.
in my imaginary picture of the world it always went like this: somewhere around six months babies start trying some kind of bland food, around a year they start spitting out porridge and eating with a spoon, and they move on to normal human food closer to a year and a half. what exactly do the little ones eat? not even a question, obviously it's little purées! the thought of tougher kid food filled me with panic: my little sister once choked badly as a kid and it scared me a lot.
in reality it all turned out completely different.
first, in Argentina there's no baby purée. why? no idea 🤷♀ the nannies clearly have ideas in their heads about boiling an apple/pumpkin/sweet potato, everyone probably makes it themselves at home.
second, one time the little one quietly swiped a banana peel off me and finished it off so thoroughly that it became instantly clear that actually more food-like food would suit him just fine too.
third, I knew the more experienced moms had downloaded solid starts and were watching something in there. how do you sign up to be one of their ambassadors? I can see exactly how to shuffle their paywalls around to boost monetization. oh — got sidetracked, sorry. whenever the little one got interested in some food of mine, I'd check in the app whether it was ok to give him that, and along the way read with amazement how exactly they suggest feeding it to 6-month-old humans.
🍌Banana not just as purée, but also in long sticks (you know, it splits so nicely into thirds). 🍓Whole strawberries, if they're big and soft. 🍖Meat in long strips. And so on.
I was very, very surprised. and for a long time I didn't get it. and then it juuust clicked, right on the strawberries:
big soft berries are terribly slippery. and tasty. so the kid a) is busy for a good long while b) is solving a fascinating intellectual problem at the intersection of fine motor skills and coordination, about how on earth to actually eat this thing c) is super strongly motivated, because wanting to eat strawberries is his own personal desire and I'm fine with it if it doesn't work out. just a perfect combination, with the one and only downside that within a two-meter radius everything turns a gorgeous pink. but everything has its downsides, right?
and that's how it ended up that the kid has very little purée: everything that can just be eaten as-is he eats himself in proper pieces, and with the spoon he's learning to fling oatmeal around. recently he's developed the motivation of «you absolutely must eat when everyone around you is eating», and for those occasions I bring along something relatively harmless to the surrounding space.
for a couple of weeks now I've been walking around in joyful whoa-mode, «wait, you could just DO it like that?»
the most interesting thing, of course: what other «out of habit / that's how I was taught» patterns are sitting in my head, and how do I find them and rewrite them?