Wednesday 6 June 2012

Foodie

It's a funny thing, bringing up a child. So much of what I do seems to be to fight against his natural instincts, to layer up some measure of civilisation over the savage, rather like the laminate layer of real wood over chip board. Underneath, it's still a mess.
Perhaps a kinder metaphor would be like layering polish onto an untreated wooden surface, eventually the dull surface will shine. I'm not totally convinced.
Joseph is mastering, or at least trying to master, the fork. Most of the time I have to put the food on the fork and then he will get hold of the fork, put the food in his mouth and hopefully eat it. It doesn't always work.
Sometimes he just gets bored. Why mess around with this thing with the points on it? It's still so much quicker just to pick it up and stuff it in there. Hunger wins and that veneer of culture might just as well be the piece of cling film I have ripped off from over the re-heated leftovers that make up lunch and thrown in the bin.
Other times, like today, he seems to like the idea of doing it properly, even if he's not sure why. Today he had boiled potato chunks to play with whilst I shovelled beef mince and onions in on a spoon. He could actually get some of the potato onto the fork and even into his mouth, but this, I think, was more by accident than by design. The problem being that the potato moved and needed to be chased around the tray, or steadied by something.
That was his idea. Why run the risk of the potato crumbling to bits or escaping when it's quite easy to pick the potato up with the right hand, hold the fork in the left and skewer the potato that way? It's a quick way to get it on the fork and I can't stop him because, after all, he's doing it properly.
He looked up at me, part way through, with a look that simply said "Remind me Mother, what's the point of all thing again?"
I couldn't answer and he ended up using the fork to bash the potato into smaller chunks that he picked up with his fingers and ate. All the beef mince went, there are some foods he is not remotely fussy about.
Whilst I was tidying up, I gave him three strawberries to play with. Joseph like strawberries, and I could tell this by their sudden absence and red juice dribbling down his chin. I could also tell this by the fact he had shoved them in whole and was trying not to lose any more juice by sucking in as hard as he could, making a noise like someone trying to reach the last little bit of thick milkshake in the bottom of a glass with too thin a straw.
I think that veneer of civilisation and culture that all children need to cope in the real world - it's a long way off yet. After all, I've not even started potty training yet.

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