I’m being unfair to the baby food, though.  I mean, yes, it is a variety of slurries served up in a rainbow of colors and flavors.  And no, I probably wouldn’t invite you over for Easter dinner and serve you ham and green beans through a straw.  But we’ve recently discovered at the local BRU more “sophisticated” ground up food.  Chicken Mango  Risotto.  Creamy Chicken Apple Compost.  Er. Creamy Chicken Apple Compote.  (Don’t believe me?  Check it out.) Finally, I thought, we can spoon feed our baby food that is as exceptional as the food that I personally prepare nightly.  I’m a big fan of the compote, ya know?

While this all sounds well and good, for the most part Justine isn’t a big fan anymore.  While we used to delight in serving her new and different bottles of goo, she doesn’t seem to have much interest now, with the exception of pears, turkey and cranberry, and green bean casserole (sans the fried onions of course).  She’ll also take her squash and oatmeal in the morning, perhaps implicitly understanding that oats are either for breakfast or horses.  But beyond these exceptions, spoon feeding her baby food results in her objection.

Objection is a mild word.  It’s more of long grunt, followed by wild swinging of extremities.  She then finishes with the “scrunch,” whereby she instantly contracts every muscle in her body and utters perhaps the most annoying whine imaginable.  I think Kim would agree, it’s a cringe-inducing horror that eats immediately at your soul and makes you want to go outside and kick down a tree.  Imagine that happening multiple times during a feeding and you can start to understand why we figure she’s moving out of the baby food stage.

This leaves us at an odd crossroads – what do we cram down the craw of our hungry baby if it isn’t the baby food which we so accustomed to using.  First is the old standby, either Cheerios or “Puffs” (which I’ve heard termed “crack for babies” and that description is apt).  She quickly learned to grab these little nuggets and crush them with her 3 teeth.  Beyond those basics, now we just try and give her whatever we can cut into small enough pieces for her, including string cheese, watermelon, mashed potatoes, meatloaf, rock candy, goose pate, and her absolute favorite, Faberge egg omelettes.  (We do have to remove the gemstones first).

This new preponderance of finger foods has had other unintended side effects, most notably our thorough re-enactment of “Leiningen vs. the Ants,” which you may remember from 7th grade English class. Justine’s recent dexterity isn’t 100%, and so probably a third of everything she picks up ends on the floor, where the tiny little monsters emerge from nothingness to shepherd the sugary goodness back to their lair to feast upon.  Which means that we need ant traps.  Which we can’t put down where the ants are.  Why?

Did I mention she’s crawling all over the place now?  Sigh.