Food Glorious Food!

It hasn’t escaped my notice that in recent weeks my little girl has turned into a bit of a gannet. She’s always had a good appetite but has gone from eating well to basically hoovering up whatever milk is offered to her (and in some cases looking round for seconds afterwards).

She’s also been watching us eat our own meals intently. I first noticed this about a month ago when I was scarfing down a portion of my husband’s fabulous spaghetti bolognese. As soon as she caught sight of what we were doing she stopped playing and stared right at me, her tongue poking in and out of her mouth as if to say “Where’s mine?”

Now whenever I appear in the morning with a bowl of Weetabix she stops whatever she’s doing and stares at me, in the manner of a cat who’s just twigged that there’s a takeaway fish supper on the kitchen table.

All this has suggested one thing to me, and a chat with our health visitor this morning confirmed it – little girl is almost ready to start solids. So it’s bye-bye to the all-milk diet and hello, no doubt, to bits of runny sweet potato being smeared over the walls (thankfully we have orange walls so this needn’t be a problem)

Hopefully it means she may also spend more time trying to eat food and less time trying to eat other stuff – her blankets, her clothes, the pushchair strap, the sides of her changing mat – that doesn’t taste quite as nice.

My husband is of course very excited at this development since he is the cook in the household and will be charged with the task of creating delicious meals for our little girl. He is crestfallen that steak dinners are off the menu for now, and that he may have to wait a while before Emily can sample his semi-legendary curries – but I’m guessing he’ll have a lot of fun experimenting with avocados, mangoes and the like in an effort to feed his daughter.

We’re going to wait a little bit longer though, since she is having her last set of jabs tomorrow and last time they really screwed up her appetite – and there’s no point trying to ply her with baby rice if she isn’t even taking milk!

As exciting as this development may be, however, there’s a certain sense of trepidation and the realisation, once again, that our little girl is growing up. It seems like only five minutes ago that she was existing on tiny dribbles of milk, now solid food is about to make its debut in her small life. She will be ordering takeaway sushi on speed-dial before we know it.