Eli: A yelp-free dinner

We finally had a yelp-free meal with Eli. We finally found the secret.

Eli wants to eat our food.

It seems pretty obvious for experienced parents. And yes, Eli's our second child. But it's our first time with a second child. ;-)

Since Tobey hardly had any eating issues, we're new to the world of fussy eating. Actually, I take that back. The only fussing he did about eating was when he wanted to self-feed but he was a bit young to be controlling a spoon. So we let him hold a spoon so he thought he was feeding himself. But we were actually still feeding him until he proved himself a little more capable. Interesting that self-feeding just doesn't seem to be Eli's "issue".

At first we thought Eli's on again off again eating was a pickiness for flavors. But then he'd sometimes eat a whole jar of something he rejected the day before. Then we thought he might be rejecting jar/mushy food. But again, he'd reject jars one day and be fine with them the next. And sometimes he'd reject the solids, like his fresh mozzarella, tofu or new foods with texture (he has yet to reject bread or crackers).

Finally at dinner at Gumba's on Friday, it was crystal clear what he wanted. He was happy eating jar food when we handed in our menus. But as soon as our salads came mid-jar, he all of a sudden started crying, fussing and rejecting. I handed him a piece of lettuce as an experiment and he did his now famous opening and shutting his outstretched hand in a "gimme" kind of way. Of course the lettuce didn't sit well with him and he continued to fuss. Then as soon as the bread came, he was reaching for that. Tom finally strolled him along Murphy Ave. to finish his jar and he came back in semi-full and happy. And in a couple of more informal experiments today, we found that Eli is fine with baby food until he sees that we're all eating non-baby food.

I guess it took us so long to figure it out because Tobey didn't do this. Either we started Tobey on table food sooner or he just never had the model of an older sibling to think, "Hey, how come I can't eat that?!" Well, it's probably about time. I've had this nagging feeling that at 15 months old, Eli's been on baby food for too long. Otherwise, we're gonna need to get him on more "real" food. Just in time for jook season.