Phasing

In the 10 short months we've known her, our Little Miss has been through ALL kinds of phases. There's been the super sleepy phase, the no napping phase, the "I hate my stroller" phase, the "I can't poop phase," the tantrum phase, and now, regretfully, we are in the "I can't stand baby food and just want to feed myself" phase. And my hunch is that this phase is a little more about gaining independence than it is about the squishy, mushy stuff called baby food. Needless to say, mealtime takes a bit of extra effort these days. If it's coming at her mouth on a spoon, she either clamps her mouth shut, shakes her head or just plain makes it IMPOSSIBLE to get it in her jaws. However, if it's finger food, she's much more interested. This morning she tried scrambled eggs and scarfed them down. Earlier this week she devoured (as much as a baby can devour) Grandma A.'s meatloaf, and we've been loading her up on her old favorites, cheese, crackers and blueberries. In fact, we've resorted to shoveling spoon fulls of vegetables or fruits in her mouth while she works to pick up a morsel of her favorite foods. Yeah .... meal times take FOREVER these days.

Here's a sample of the head shaking tactic she's been using to shun away any sign of baby food (no thanks to Grandma's encouragement and her amazing impersonation of Amy Winehouse!).