Boy eats, and boy does he...

I know I have mentioned this before, but I was just going through some pictures and noticed that the majority of the shots of our baby boy consist of him devouring food.


This is significantly different behavior than that of our girls. In fact, we have a little video we made of Zoe's first nine months of life, and in it there is not much eating. Instead, in every shot she is crying. Always. And holding her are two strange looking zombies that I presume are Nathan and me, but it's hard to tell.


You would have never guessed it, but the first nine months of Simon's life he wasn't even on the doctor's growth chart for weight. After he was born he went right down to the "less than 3%" margin, which means (in doctor language) that he weighed as much or more than 3 percent of the US population of babies his age. We weren't worried at first because I was breastfeeding him and pumping and we could see that he was getting plenty to eat and he was growing just fine as far as head circumference and height. Developmentally he was on track too, moving around and cooing and smacking and kicking and pretty much driving us nuts. But when the doctor finally suggested at nine months that we should think about switching to formula we were finally thinking it might be a good idea too (maybe that's what he needs to sleep through the night?). So we did. And we also started feeding him more of what we were eating. He liked the canned baby food just fine (except for the veal which he protested with dramatic gagging noises as soon as it hit his tongue) but when we gave him pieces of what we were eating he was in heaven.



You see, Nathan is the chef in our house. If the cooking was left up to me we would have tacos or eggo waffles every night for dinner. With Nathan we get to have things like Pad Thai or green curry and unagi. He cooks us up carna asada, grilled cajun steak, whiskey crab soup, Guinness stew, chicken polenta, and coconut shrimp. He has a knack for all things culinary and it is a wonderful thing to be his non-cooking wife. It was really with the addition of Nathan supplied food that the fattening of Simon began. Four months later, we have a boy who loves food, and therefore, must eat at all times. If he sees Nathan in the kitchen, he must be poised in his high chair, ready for samples.

He eats and eats and eats and eats. We discovered he really really loves food if we let him try to feed it to himself. This includes things like soups, and yet excludes things like spoons. So naturally eating time is also natural disaster time followed closely by scrub the baby bath time.

It's all good though. And we don't really fear him getting too fat or anything, all our kids seem to be a special kind of skinny. The girls eat plenty, it just has to be EXACTLY what they want, and no mysterious green things or black things or really any mysterious things mixed in at all.

So basically they eat pizza with cheese or pepperoni and waffles. I could have kept them sustained just fine on my own. But now Nathan gets to feed someone his food and he doesn't have to explain what all the ingredients are and how they actually are yummy and stop-picking-just EAT YOUR DINNER.

All done.