Feeding the Baby

When our grandson was about eight months old, Shosh asked us to babysit one evening while she went to a meeting. She said she’d bring him over at about 6:00, and asked if we would give him dinner. I decided that if this was going to be a frequent thing, I might as well buy some baby food and keep it in the house so his mother wouldn’t have to bring it every time. So I went to Jewel and bought baby food, and also a package of diapers. (You wouldn’t believe how many different kinds of diapers there are- but more about that later.)

When I asked Shosh what kind of baby food to buy, she told me to get strained fruits and vegetables. It turns out that strained vegetables come in only two varieties: green and orange. The green ones are “Peas” and “Green Beans.” They’re exactly the same color, sort of a darkish, unappetizing, grayish green. It’s the sort of color and texture that you sometimes find inside a plastic bag that you find in the very bottom of the crisper drawer when you haven’t cleaned the refrigerator in about 3 months. You know that once upon a time, in the distant past, it used to be something edible, but now it’s been liquefied and is virtually unrecognizable as food.

I don’t really know how they make baby food, but I hope that isn’t the way.

The orange ones say “Carrots” or “Sweet Potatoes” or “Butternut Squash,” but I strongly suspect that they are all the same. First of all, they are all the same color and they all smell the same and have the same texture (strained.) That should be proof enough. But just to be sure, I decided to taste them. (I know, it’s gross, but I am a very curious person, and curiosity accounts for a lot of things that an otherwise sane and normal person might do. Besides, it seemed sort of hypocritical, and even mean, to feed something to my own grandson if I thought it was too gross to even taste.)

Not surprisingly, they all tasted pretty much the same. Which is to say, awful. Okay, maybe not awful, but definitely bland and tasteless. I can’t believe that babies really like this stuff. Maybe it’s just that they’ve never tasted real food, so they don’t realize how they are being hoodwinked into eating this orange goop. I’ll bet that’s what’s really behind the “Terrible Twos:” this is when the kid figures it out. He’s sitting in the highchair, dutifully swallowing spoonful upon spoonful of Strained Mixed Vegetables, and gradually he notices that everyone else is eating something different. Maybe it’s Curried Chicken Kabobs, perhaps a Rib Roast Braised in Wine, or even just a simple hot dog on a toasted bun. But whatever it is, it sure beats Strained Mixed Vegetables, day after day after day. Now that the kid realizes he’s been duped, he’s mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it any more!

So, getting back to our meal with the baby: when he arrived, he was hungry, so I took out a jar of Strained Mixed Vegetables, and we went outside on the deck and sat at the patio table, and Norman and I prepared to feed him. Since we hadn’t bought a high chair yet, Norman held the baby on his lap, and I tried to spoon Strained Mixed Vegetables (orange goop) into the baby’s mouth. He had an interesting habit of putting his hand in his mouth after every spoonful of food, and then taking his hand out and rubbing his head or his eyes or pretty much anything else within reach. So of course, much of the Strained Mixed Vegetables went onto his hair and in his ears and on Norman. The dog, who wasn’t stupid and figured out the very first time that the baby ate a meal at our house that this would be a good meal for her as well, helpfully licked off the stuff that was on the baby's legs and feet, which of course tickled and was completely engrossing, so it took the better part of an hour for him to finish just that one little jar of Strained Mixed Vegetables.

I also gave him some plain spaghetti, which he grabbed off the plate with his fist and tried to stuff into his mouth, but he hasn't quite got the part about opening his fist while the food is actually in his mouth, so he just put his fist in there and then took it out again and THEN opened it, so he smeared the spaghetti, now tastefully garnished with a delicious sauce of Strained Mixed Vegetables (orange goop), all over his face and his head and Norman’s shirt, and dropped most of it on his feet and the ground. He kept craning his neck and squirming around on Norman’s lap to try to see the dog, who was walking around under the table looking for more food, and each time he twisted around, he grabbed onto Norman’s shirt or his arm or even his neck for balance, so by the time he was done eating, both he and Norman could have used a bath. It was entertaining, though, and the dog was very happy.

Just as the baby was finished and I had wiped him off, our son-in-law showed up on his way home from work, and I handed the baby to him, and the baby promptly spit up partly-digested Strained Mixed Vegetables (now also mixed with spaghetti) all over his father’s shirt. (It might have had something to do with the fact that his father was throwing him in the air. But I could be wrong about this.)