b e n j a m i n f a l k e n b e r g

OK, so he’s eating solids, and eating quite well. That’s great. He’s also teething, and that’s great too… but he’s soooooo messy now when he eats!

He’s recently decided that he should stick his left thumb or another finger (but 90 percent of the time, it’s his left thumb) in his mouth after he gets a spoonful of food–before he’s chewed, swirled or swallowed the food at all–and suck on that digit until the cows come home.  And in the process of doing this, he ends up slathering food all over himself, the table, his Bumbo seat… Our favorite places to find food after a meal is in his ears or in clumps in his hair.

Oh–eating now takes forever!

It’s something to do with teething, we’re told, but we watch him make a HUGE mess and while it’s sort of endearing and funny to watch, you then realize he’s not someone else’s kid and that it’s happening to you, and it’s your mess to clean up… At that point, you feel like you’re regressing somehow with his feedings and learning to eat.

We’re trying really hard not to take the whole thing too seriously or personally, but wow!

Benjamin survived his 4 days of peas. Last night, we started carrots!

Pediatricians recommend initially trying out new foods for 4-5 days to watch for any allergic reaction. Looks like he’s OK with peas. And he really loved the carrots last night. He’s a really good eater all-around, but it seems like the solid food is messing a little bit with the breastfeeding…

His Bumbo seat is working out pretty well as his highchair so far, too. He has definitely taken a long while to get used to it. We still don’t think he loves it, he at least tolerates it much, much better.

His diaper this morning is already reflecting the changeover to the carrots, too…

What’s after the carrots in a few days? Green beans! :)

We picked up a Bumbo seat at USA Baby in Brookfield a couple nights ago. We opened one up in the store and sat Benjamin in it; he seemed to like it OK. Mom definitely has her reservations about it, so we agreed to not let him spend a LOT of time in it so he can still learn to sit on his own.

So far….mixed results, really. Benjamin definitely can tell the seat is trying to control and contain him, and he doesn’t like that very much. He’s tried to arch his back and get out of it a half-dozen times already. He’ll sit in it while we’re eating dinner for a while, and is content, but like any other way he’s situated during meals (or any other time, really), he eventually gets sick of that particular vantage point and wants a change.

I think we’ll have to give him time to get more used to it. USA Baby ensured us that they’d have no problems accepting a return if he turned out not to like it, so we’re kinda counting on that, just in case…

USA Baby was the only place in town (that we knew to check, anyway) that had them in stock in-store. They had light blue and the sea-foam green (only two green ones of the 10 or so they had in stock, actually). We got a light-blue one. $45, which I think is about what it would cost online with dog-slow shipping, iirc.

We’ll see how it goes…