Solid Food; Solid Poo
It’s crazy how much of a quantum leap it is from baby to human once your child starts eating solid food. Dmitri has been eating whatever my wife and I eat, just pureed into mush, which I’m told doesn’t affect the flavor at all. Sitting in his little high chair, he’s a smaller version of an adult, albeit one wearing a bib and with food smeared all over his lips (granted, that’s kind of how I look sometimes, especially when there’s a delicious crab boil to be had).
Grownup baby isn’t all fun and games, though. With more human food comes more human poo, i.e. the smelly kind. It’s been a shock to the system having to deal with baby excreting poos that smell like, well, poo. Before, they smelled like milk. Now, not so much. We also learned that more human food equals more stuff that can stop up the baby. We’d been going buck wild with Dmitri’s menu not knowing everything we were feeding him was giving him constipation. Oh, the look on poor Dmitri’s face trying to pass a rock for a bowel movement. It turns out a healthy dose of bread, carrots, and spaghetti will stop up a baby just as fast as it will a grown up.
As is the theme of this blog, my wife and I keep learning parenting has a steep learning curve. It sucks to see the baby suffer for our mistakes, but we’ve managed to keep the mistakes small (thus far). If we’re lucky enough to have another child, we hope not to make the same mistakes twice. Fortunately, Dmitri is a patient little dude; willing to tough it out while my wife and I learn how to become mom and dad.