And it begins...

Ollie and I took a trip to the store today to stock up on feeding supplies and baby food. It always takes me a while to make a selection, must be something to do with all the choices! Just for a sippy cup alone there must have been 20+ different kinds all advertising different special things about their sippy cup. After finally picking one I handed it to Ollie, he grabbed it and started chewing on the corner of the cardboard it was in and was content doing that for most of our excursion.

The chewed up corner is the evidence that this was Ollie's choice.

After supplies I moved onto the food. Even that is a little hard to choose from. It's funny that I can remember all the way back to when I was the big sister of my six younger siblings and for some reason when it came to baby food I must have tried the veggies and stuff to know they were blan and all together not that tasty but I remembered that I always thought the oatmeal cereal tasted good, so I went with that. As I stared down all the veggies I thought it seemed somewhat cruel to feed him peas, but went with it anyway so he can get his veggies. Growing up my mother didn't allow us to be picky eaters, we had to eat whatever was placed in front of us with one exception- we all got to choose one food we didn't have to eat. Jodee may have been the smart one because she chose onions and since they are in so many dishes she got away with getting excluded from just one food. I on the other hand picked sweet potatoes/yams. I don't know why but still to this day I don't like the taste. Every year when Thanksgiving comes around I look at those sweet potatoes covered in marshmellows and brown sugar and I give it one more try but it is fruitless because they still taste the same as the year before- YUK! Growing up my Dad thought it was funny to pull the canned yams out of the pantry and show them to me because every time he did I would make faces and gagging sounds for his amusement. As I looked at the sweet potatoes on the shelf I wanted to pass them up so Ollie wouldn't be tortured as I had but in the end I decided that Ollie will get to make his own choices about what he does and does not like so into the cart they went. Every veggie and fruit on the store shelf has equal representation in our pantry.

Ollie also picked out another little toy, when I showed it to him he grabbed it and started playing with it right away- I'm such a sucker. It's a little carseat toy that he can pull on, Matt thinks Ollie is so smart because he really does reach up and pull it down, then he lets go and watches it zip back up.

More feeding supplies and another toy.

Once home I put Ollie in his saucer play thing while I unpacked and arranged everything. He loves playing in that thing, but only for a certain amount of time. He was starting to get hungry which resulted in a mild fit. For whatever reason this time his little fit seemed so funny. I guess it was because he started taking it out on the little book, slamming the pages around and getting frustrated at them. I laughed because that is exactly what I do- when I am hungry I get irritable and getting mad at objects is something I've done on several occasions. I sure hope that isn't something he has ever seen me do though- maybe I shouldn't be laughing!

My plan for feeding was to introduce something new every three days. And we started with oatmeal cereal. Thank goodness for the feeding spoons I received as gifts, I haven't tried the regular spoons but given that he didn't even like me to take the spoon away from his mouth because it meant the food stopped coming I would imagine that this whole thing would have been a lot harder with a regular spoon.

I would say we were both learning, he was trying to figure out how his tounge works in this whole thing, and I was trying to figure out how much, how fast, and how to keep it in his mouth.

In the end there was a good amount of cereal in his bib (love the rubber bibs too btw!)

And the cereal had seaped under his chin and down his clothes, but he was fed and happy!

This is one thing I have to let go of- he loves, loves, loves to chew on the straps that keep him in and they are as tight as I can make them right now so he can easily get them into his mouth. I say I have to let go because every time he does it I think how dirty the straps are getting and that part of me that still wants everything perfectly clean starts to feel a little anxiety over it and that is when I have to decide that it is ok.

Day two I was smarter and simply fed him in his diaper, his happy, every so messy face makes me smile!