Day 1. It’s well past time we fed our son solids so we prepare little pots of apple, pear and butternut squash purées. The boy appears intrigued at these artisan wares, so neatly prepared we take charming photos. After one repulsed bite, however, he deals us a glare that says, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Each subsequent morsel is greeted as if I’d squeezed the contents of my belly button on to a spoon.
Day 4. Each session in his high chair is a loveless tour through a Greatest Hits of his most baffled and contemptuous faces. Still nothing being digested. Astonished and dismayed, he sits, covered in orange fluid, striking the miserable pose of a mid-90s light entertainment figure on Noel’s House Party, gunged within an inch of his life.
Day 9. The novelty long since passed, our attempts to get food in his mouth now lack even the marginal advantage of surprise. Being pelted with half-solid foodstuffs has become a routine affront which marks us as permanently deranged. It’s hard to know what babies are thinking, but at lunchtime we have no such difficulty. Every grimace and jerk of his head and body is unmistakable shorthand for, ‘We’ve been through this and I’m not a fan.’ There is purée all over his skin and clothes but none in his mouth or stomach. The entire kitchen is stewing in a coarse patina of decaying mulch. We might not be getting the deposit back.
Day 14. The hatred has not softened but has, conversely, made him wise. Some low animal cunning simmers in that furrowed brow, and he anticipates our strikes, batting away that small, stumpy spoon with the nonchalant brio of a taekwondo green-belt. The stains on the wall and ceiling are now permanent, and we dare not remove them in case they’ve become load-bearing.
Day 17. Things my son has attempted to taste this week: our kitchen sponge, my big toe, every book he owns and a dog’s ear. Things he’s refused: anything recognisably edible.
Day 20. We’ve abandoned homemade purées and find some success in the day-glo plastic pouches of pre-made supermarket mulch. For the first time, a reliably sustainable amount of matter is reaching his stomach. We’re so happy we don’t even mind the bits of drying butternut squash that now descend from the kitchen ceiling in a smelly orange snowfall.
Day 21. To our astonishment, he is now accepting gunk more or less on command. We venture blinking into a bold new day, assured, finally, that one long, dark nightmare of parenting is behind us.
Day 22-30. Oh. My. God. His poos.
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