Dave the Dad 6 - Romper Chomper
I don't know if you noticed but Tuesday was hot. By 4.30 I was slumped on the sofa while Jane chose the floor.Between us Tom shuttled, grinning at his entrepreneurial skills, as he tasted first Jane's and then my lollypop. We loved this although Jane lost her humour a tad when Tom broke her lolly off the stick, ate a frozen mouthful and rubbed the remainder into her skirt. He has come on so rapidly since those exciting days when we introduced 'real' food for the first time. Tom had a few early digestive problems and so we moved him onto solids slightly earlier than the books suggest. I remember chatting to a friend at work whose son, Stan, is two weeks older than Tom. He was stunned. 'But you're not supposed to start solids yet, he's got to be six months old! It says so in the book.' I relished my liberal shunning of the Man and his stupid rules and was relaxed, flippant even as I waved my friend's concerns away.
I remained so until Tom first choked on a piece of mildly-thicker-than-completely-pureed apple. You quickly discover that the most alarming thing about choking is that there is no noise. Tom simply closed his eyes, raised his eyebrows, opened his mouth wide and seemed to strain forward. In my slo-mo-Scorsese mind's eye I ease him out of his Bumbo chair, pat him confidently on the back and expertly hook the piece of apple from his mouth. In reality I panicked wildly and probably almost broke both his arms and his back as I grabbed, flung, slapped, wobbled and scrambled with my flailing hands in order to free the evil fruit. If I was a trifle tough then he clearly didn't mind as he merely sat back down with his mum and immediately tried to get another, slightly more lethal piece of apple from the plate. I took this in from a slight distance as I had collapsed onto the carpet, the force of my thumping heart bucking my adrenalin-spent body.
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Such eventualities might possibly be the reason, in evolutionary terms, why many babies seem to grow two bottom teeth before all others. As soon as these came through our son used them diligently to rake food into strips. As Tom seems to automatically pull down rather than push up (cf William's tail, my chest hair, Jane's glasses) this would appear to be an efficient system. They are also remarkably useful for scraping paint from the bars of his cot (we have a wavy parallel line pattern on at least four bars), slamming into your upper gum when you slip holding onto a chair (no visible scars there so we still count as good parents) and biting your mother on the finger when she foolishly tries to find out what on earth it is that you have in your mouth.
The other possible reason might be to look cute. In the early days of night-time shenanigans when either my wife or I would be up four of five times a night Jane always remarked on how deliberately cute Tom would look in the morning. A little grin here, a whooped laugh there, a random wave the other. All of which recalled our great love for him and not the murderous dismay we had encountered at 3.42 that bitter November morning. Same with teeth because Tom's two bottom front teeth are perfect: symmetrical with clean edges and brilliantly white.He now has four others breaking through on his upper gum but these look like monsters! For months we have monitored the progress of these enormous, amorphous shapes that, like an underground earthquake, have raked our son's body with sleepless nights, diarrhoea, grumpy afternoons, pints of saliva and Disney-red cheeks. They've now broken the surface and judging from their early appearance Tom could well take a walk-on role in Ice Age 3 as Sid's younger brother.
The point is that he increasingly uses what he has for eating a relatively normal diet. We can now go to restaurants and order him food with no salt or seasoning but, if possible, with lashings of butter. His mum positively encourages this as she has always mistrusted anyone who doesn't like butter; the male equivalent would probably be any man who thinks Goodfellas is a bit too violent. And yet she stares severely at me every time I pick up our lovely son and say 'Chunker-chunker-chunker Tom'. She can't have it both ways and anyway he thinks it's a right laugh. Obviously when he's twenty-six and weighs nine stone I may have to re-evaluate who was right.
I will admit though that Jane has done a superb job in priming Tom for independent eating. She always prepared finger food, entertained him with a variety of distractions that could be easily washed, offered him variety whilst balancing his intake of food groups/vitamins/additional milk feeds and always listened to his responses for certain tastes. The only difficulty I have with all of this is that it is rather messy. In most areas I'm as shambolic as other men but I do find it hard not to dab continually at Tom as he flings another bowl of squash over his head. Jane copes womanfully with this and has proved to be correct: he loves food, is superb at feeding himself, can use a mug (upside-down as it happens, but hey!) and will try just about anything.
On Monday for lunch he had a starter - banana on toast -, two main courses - chicken pasta and parsnip surprise-, one dessert - strawberry smoothie - and half a beaker of water. It was the perfect lunch but when he closed his eyes, raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth I braced for action. And he sneezed. Imagine the scene: you're on the second tier of the Eiffel Tower, you're unwell and the pavement is six hundred feet below. Our son, the nascent Jackson Pollock! Lovely.
July 22 2006
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com. Read more about his hilarious experiences as a Dad. |
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