Forgotten drafts: Spitting out carrots

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since November 2016. This is what I had written:

She’s been biting off little pieces of food, like her carrot sticks and then daintily spitting them back out if she can’t swallow them. Which is kind of adorable/I hope she doesn’t do this when she’s five.

I haven’t thought about this, well, since 2016. We did baby-led weaning with Olivia which paired perfectly with the fact that I’m a lazy parent and have All Of The Plans to do the same with Emelia. It was fun. It was easy. Luckily I kept all these weird things of food around and would pair a bunch of food together to make lunches like steak strips and green peppers. You put it in front of her, she’d eat it. And she just loved sitting at the table with us.

Here she is rocking pancakes and strawberries at nine months.

In giving her the same food we ate, she learned table manners early. I remember her eating this chili with us around eight months using her spoon all by herself, nose running from the heat and smiling as we laughed at how adorable it all was.

When she made a mess, she picked up her napkin and would dab at her mouth. She was too much to handle sometimes. And I remember her eating food such as carrots and politely spitting them out if they were hard to chew. And I know you may think there’s nothing polite about spitting out food, but believe me, she made it look like that.

She’s now four years old (and two months) and I’m still surprised sometimes at how well she eats. Spaghetti, tacos, pizza—she really doesn’t make a huge mess. Which is good because…ew. I put in my time hosing her down after meals when she was a baby.