I continue to be a colossal failure at dinner in every respect. It’s my least favorite time of day, and Edith is not into it at all. At first, it was diverting for her — playing with various sorts of mush in a little bowl with sticks in, a new sort of toy that she had to sit in a special chair to access, while also being face-level with the adults. A part of things!
But after a few nights of this, I could see her slowly begin to realize this was not a weird occasional game, but rather an ongoing obligation.
“Again?” she seemed to say, as I strapped her into the chair and presented her with various substances and textures.
Still, she gamely soldiered on.
Edith will not be fed, but she will occasionally condescend to feed herself. Not if it seems like I really want her to, though. If I so much as attempt to approach her mouth with the spoon, I get immediate full cheek. That’s just not happening, we aren’t doing that. But if I load the spoon with food and leave it somewhere on the tray, and then busy myself with my own dinner and pointedly ignore her, Edith will eventually pick up the spoon and suck on it. It’s never the business end of the spoon, but I have taken to loading up the handle with food as well, so that whatever her mode of attack, she is going to inevitably encounter sustenance of some sort. She would vastly prefer the spoon without the food, and I don’t mean to give the impression that she intentionally eats any of it, but she will at least mouth it if it happens to be on the way to something else she was doing.
She loves tomatoes and limes. She will happily suck on a tomato or lime wedge. Everything else has gone over like a lead balloon.
After dinner, I put her in the bath, and she crams the wet washrag into her mouth and sucks on it ravenously, like a baby who just crawled through the desert.
Accismus 