fanny
Last month Maya started to eat solid food although there is nothing solid about it. If it were solid, she wouldn’t be able to paint with it on her face.
I clearly remember what it’s like when we first fed brother solid food. Basically it’s hard to forget about his every eating attempt – NOT EATING. But we knew she’s different. At least we hope she’s different. She gazes at us begging for food when she is sitting with us for dinner. Her eyeballs follow our every single spoonful of food from the plate to our mouths. Last Sunday, when she was given a tiny bit of ice cream, she licked the whole spoon so vigorously that the warmth from her mouth was going to melt the spoon.
Although none of the first couple spoonfuls of rice cereal that I tried to feed her made it into her mouth, I have to admit that one of the fun things about being parents is to see your baby being smeared with mushy colorful food on their face. Who doesn’t love a baby with orange food splattered on her chubby cheeks? But Maya, the baby who would be dead if there is one second she doesn’t have her hand in her mouth! And the mess just becomes so uncontrollable as the mushy-food-drool mixture travels from spoon to mouth to hand to everything that she touches, like her hair, her feet and MY FACE!
Everyone knows the paranoid inside me when it comes to dirt and mess. In the panic of the moment that I saw her foody-drolly hand was going to touch me again, I couldn’t think straight. Instead of wiping her hand right away, I GRABBED IT AND BEGAN LICKING UP THE FOOD ON IT WITH MY TONGUE.
Then I licked her cheek, her mouth and nose. Then I ate her right cheek, and her left cheek. This did nothing to un-mess the mess. However, it tasted very sweet.