If there is something messier than teaching another human being how to eat, I'm ready to hear about it. Lemon is well entrenched in that awkward stage where he basically refuses to take food offered to him on a spoon, because he is a big kid and can do it himself, thank you. Except that, well, he can't. There is yogurt in places in my house where there should not, under any circumstances, be yogurt. The phrase "Oh, that's just a piece of french toast stuck to the bottom of your slipper" has been uttered. We might need to get a sink strainer for our bathtub.
All of this is well within the norm, except for the fact that we're so worried about getting calories into Lemon, since he needs something like 1.5-2 times as many calories as the average kid. Enter the smoothie. Lemon is actually very adept with the sippy cup, so a few weeks ago I started making him smoothies. Those early ones were just yogurt, milk, baby cereal, and heavy cream, but we've gotten much more sophisticated since then. Now, we have flavors like carrot-pear, sweet potato-banana, and raspberry. I've found that I can add tofu or hard boiled egg yolk, too. As long as I put in a half-packet of vanilla Carnation Instant Breakfast at the end, it all goes down fine. I've even kept Lemon up to date with the latest celebrity trends by making him green smoothies with spinach, although I suspect my version is ever so slightly higher in calories than what Gwyneth Paltrow's kids are drinking!
This week we took Lemon for his first hike at a nature conservancy near our house. The weather was lovely and Lemon had a blast. It was his first time riding in the backpack I got for him and he really enjoyed the view from up high. I need to wear a headscarf or something next time, though, because he thought my hair was the perfect thing to hold on to as we made our way down the trail. Later, he got out to walk on his own and held on tightly to the trail map in case he got lost. A kind stranger who passed us as we were taking a break on a bench offered to take a family portrait for us. As she correctly pointed out, "He'll be in college before you know it, and you won't have any pictures of the three of you because one of you is always holding the camera!"
