food prude

"When can she start on spare ribs?"

[trying to keep my voice patient but the decibel level rising towards the end] "She's barely six months old. I don't know if you noticed but our daughter doesn't have a single tooth yet. Presumably she will need several for spare ribs"

[The usually Paranoid Papa is a tasty-vore - he eats all food that tastes good to him, and rejects the humbler foods like kadhi, kaddu, lauki et al, which I love. I am determined that K will eat everything unlike PP and he is equally determined to cultivate his own kind of taste buds.]

So far we have essayed dal, ragi, oat bran, rice, mashed and stewed fruits and veggies and egg yolks with varying degrees of success. PP crows in victory every time K pulls a face at anything that he has decided does not taste good. He is bent on corrupting her, but I battle on valiantly. Sigh.

So I am a food prude. I try and avoid the unhealthy stuff in the normal course of things [it goes without saying that I succumb big time when I do]. Breads, soups, cakes, stews, pizzas, cookies, spreads and the like are home-made more often than not. The rest of the daily desi stuff too. MIL and I pretty much divide the desi/ non-desi cooking and it works well. So there was no way I was going to buy baby food for K.

Having been labelled the "internet mum" by my family with good cause (I insisted that I was dying of a possible pulmonary embolism when I had a leg cramp during my pregnancy because I had read about it on the internet) I decided that I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and ventured into something that sounded delightfully natural: baby led weaning.

A still hasn't stopped laughing when he reminds me of it. There I was with apple mush in my hair, in Ghunghroo's fur, on the pink fishy toy, in K's hair, my clothes, her clothes, the bed cover (that's right IN the bed cover - rubbed in well) and rather memorably, up one nostril. That's when I decided to leave the feeding of solids to Dadi and her little jungli poti. And I will only venture onto baby-led weaning when it's time to give her solid stuff to chew on. Lesson learned.


 

tea-thing troubles

Appropriate, isn't it, that the first post on "yet-another-mummy-blog-oh-GAWDS-help-us" is on teething troubles?

Having pandered (did I say shamelessly? Ok ok - shamelessly) to narrative convention, let me commence to begin (that is a phrase punishable by hanging according to my favourite author, Terry Pratchett) but I might as well be hung for a sheep as a fluffy baa-lamb.

So, one was labouring on womanfully with the midnight-to-dawn feeds to soothe the pain of sprouting what I shall regret calling 'teef', the rivers of drool, the colic and the occasional loosies and what have you that accompanies the advent of teef.

And one woke up and begged a cup of tea from the brand new help while the milk monster was still snuggled in la-la land. One staggered to the kitchen to try and get in another pumping session. And one saw the horrific sight of one's carefully hoarded stash of expressed breast milk (EBM) being poured generously into the chai ka patila.

(Alright, alright, too many ones - I'm losing count here) There was a screeching and wailing and gnashing of teeth and my poor MIL ran out to rescue me from what she was sure was certain death - 'Twasn't  but 'twas a close run thing. I had a meeting that afternoon and had been saving it like a miser for when I would be away. AND she was on a growth spurt which meant the little milk monster was twice her usual size... Ah well... c'est la vie avec bebe.

Sometimes you have to laugh. Otherwise you cry.

P.S. I didn't even TASTE the damn thing. She took a look at my face and poured it away!