[blparent] finger food suggestions for an almost toddler

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Hi, all.  Sarah and I just got finished with the lunch from hell.  Or at least that's the way I perceive it--she seems pretty satisfied with the world now that it's over--she's babbling happily and playing with the pots and pans in my kitchen cupboards like nothing happened, like her clothes and mine, and our hair, and the high chair aren't covered with Gerber spaghetti and meat sauce, like we weren't both near tears five minutes ago.  I feel like I got hit by a train and dragged for a little while.  A slight exaggeration maybe, but only a slight one.

Sarah and I have been having battles lately over the spoon, most of which I lose.  It isn't that she doesn't want food, she's fortunately not a picky eater.  She'll try anything.  The deal is, she wants to feed herself.  Fair enough, that's the end goal, right?  But the spoon is too cumbersome for her, so she resorts to her hands.  That's fine, as long as she's eating diced banana or sweet potato or bits of meat or hard-boiled egg yolk, or whole round peas, or Cheerios.  But those foods alone hardly make up a balanced diet.  She needs other things that are too soft and runny to pick up, like yogurt and such, and she absolutely won't allow me to feed her with a spoon.  If I can manage to hold down her two wildly waving fists with one hand, she flops her head madly from side to side so I can't get the dreaded spoon anywhere near her mouth with the other, and she ends up with food behind her ears, across her eyebrows, down her neck--you get the picture.  And you can imagine the screeching sound track that goes with it.  I'm finding it hard to be calm and patient.  This time, after many tries, I gave up on the spoon altogether because I don't want the high chair to become a power struggle or a source of traumatic memories, and I sure don't want to cross the line into force feeding.  I had that done to me as a child and still suffer the effects.  I thickened the Gerber spaghetti and meat sauce with cereal so it would hold together and just let her shovel it into her mouth with both hands from the high chair tray, and then cleaned up the big mess afterward.  Gerald can feed Sarah with a spoon, but she certainly isn't willing, it's just that he can see the flailing hands and the dodging mouth and sneak bites in on her.  But he isn't here most of the time, and I have a responsibility to figure this out.

Anyway, besides the catharsis of writing this all out when I feel I have to tell most people most of the time that things are utterly perfect, otherwise I'm afraid they'll be doubting me as a parent and, in the case of my family, wondering if they should intervene--I guess my question is how do I resolve this stalemate?  I know I should give Sarah more finger foods, and I'll be looking for every new idea I can get on that front.  But till she can feed herself with a spoon, how can I help her and the mealtime skirmishes that nobody really wins?  It's so odd because she has no wish to hold her own bottle or learn to drink from a cup, but she wants to feed herself no matter what.

Thanks,
Jo Elizabeth

"Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water."--Swedish proverb