Giving into the Mess

I have to admit that when I chose to do BLW part of my decision was based on laziness. The last thing I really wanted to do was sit and shovel spoonful after spoonful of food into Madame’s mouth. I would rather put it out for her and let her do the hard work. Yes there is TONS of mess to begin with but I also looked at it as an investment, hoping that it would improve her fine motor skills and with any luck learning to use utensils sooner, which is still to be seen. However when starting out I also knew I wanted Madame to allow me to spoon feed her when necessary, this quickly turned into a big fail. I am not sure if this was due to what I tried to start Madame out on with spoon feeding (quinoa cereal) or just the fact that Madame is terribly independent and was not going to have the whole being fed thing when she thought she could do it herself. After a few weeks of failed attempts I pretty much gave up on things like porridge and soups and anything Madame could not easily pick up herself.

Someone suggested letting her feed herself by putting a bowl on her tray with a spoon and while I did not mind the mess all over her I knew it would be all of 10 seconds before Madame had the bowl up in the air and on the floor and I really had no desire to constantly be cleaning up porridge or soup off the floor. Today the answer became clear as I was grocery shopping. A bowl that suctioned to her high chair tray, I suctioned it close enough for her to use a spoon (not that she does hands are much easier) and let her go to town.

I am happy to say that Madame is terribly efficient at using her hand to scoop porridge into her mouth and towards the end even perfected a technique to scoop up the porridge with rice cake. Way to go Madame!