Before Lewis arrived at the age where he could eat solids, I had a vision. I wanted to do Baby Led Weaning with him. Essentially, that means that you just give baby some of whatever food you’re eating, and they feed themselves. It is messy, but simple. It seems so natural – “hey baby, here’s some food. Yum yum”. And they advertise it as making your child less picky later.

I’m not sure how well-researched that last part is, but simplicity sounded good to me. And eating mush, baby-bird-style, sounded unappealing.

Lewis, however, disagreed. He loves mush.

OK kid. You want mush? Mush it is!

I felt like such a veteran mom when I didn’t try to force my vision on a non-compliant baby and just rolled with it. I always feel better having a plan going into things, but life (and babies, particularly!) has a funny way of taking your plans and throwing them out the window. Plans are really just “the thing I’m going to try first”, not “plans”. We don’t write anything in permanent ink around here!

And you know what? Feeding Lewis baby mush is totally fun. I don’t actually have to chew anything up and spit it into his mouth baby-bird-style (haha). It is actually very sophisticated, involving a spoon and a bib. And it can be simple too, if you buy the food at the store. And since I don’t even have time to shower lately (I think it has been 3 days now…?), much less make homemade baby food, obviously I am buying the mush at the store. Simple.

So we’ve adjusted the vision. And Lewis loves it. He attacks that spoon full of mush with so much gusto (oooh the joyful shrieks of delight!). And eventually he’ll understand the appeal of real human food. But for now, baby-bird mush is super duper, and he hasn’t met a flavor he doesn’t like! Which really makes me wonder about the Baby Led Weaning pickiness theory….