The Messy Affair

Last night, I gave Andrew some chicken soup (with veggies) and beef stew for dinner. After a few spoonfuls of the soup he just burst out crying. Real tears coming down and everything. I could tell that he really wanted to be held so I quickly unstrapped him, picked him up and cuddled him. I have no idea what brought on the crying. (I know that the soup wasn't too hot since I am pretty neurotic about that.) Once Andrew was safely in my lap I decided to try and feed him a little more because after all he did not eat enough before. So with the bowls on the highchair tray and Andrew in my lap I started to give him some more. He ate very nicely. He ate some more soup, and some carrots and turnips from the soup (no chicken because he gets personally if I try to feed it to him and will then proceed to not eat anymore since he doesn't trust what it is) and then a potato and a drop of beans/barley and meat from the stew. In the middle, as he often does, Andrew tried grabbing at the plate (the one with the beef stew luckily) so I cut up a few pieces of the potato and put them on the tray so that Andrew could feed himself a little. He was doing fine this way (with me pushing a few bites into his mouth myself) until he decided that he needs to take it directly from the plate. He pulled the plate and put his hand into the stew. He was just grabbing and then shoving things into his mouth. Needless to say it was a big mess. Then he toppled over the soup bowl (the highchair tray has a rim so at least the spill was contained). After grabbing at more of the stew, Andrew (my little neat one - now where did he get that from) decided that he did not like the mess on the back of his hand, so he started rubbing his hand on the side of the highchair to clean it off (so some got onto the rug but I cleaned it up quickly before it could get mashed in). After I thought that he had ate enough and that there was a big enough mess I called my husband to bring us some paper towels. I washed off Andrew and the tray and picked up the pieces from the floor.

Later Andrew got to have his desert - baked apples, which he really loves.

So yeah there was a big mess, but we had fun and Andrew looked to cute. If only I had thought (and had clean enough hands) to take a picture at the time...

Oh well, I am sure things like this will happen again (and again, and again...)

By the way, while I am talking about food - does anybody have some good recipe ideas that I can make for Andrew (he is nine months old)?