Dinnertime.

Tonight's dinner for Alec: meatloaf, oatmeal, and a little bit of ripped up napkin, which I'm pretty sure qualifies as a carb.

Here he is also demonstrating his new trick: "How big is Alec? SOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo big!" He does it when HE wants to, and if you try to coax him to do it on demand, he looks at you with the exact same look Jenna did, the one that says, "I'm not some PERFORMING MONKEY... I'll do it when I feel like."

Eating has been a bit of a challenge for Alec. He seems to just now be able to tolerate textures different than pureed baby food; I tried a few weeks ago giving him those puffs that melt in your mouth and as soon as he tried it, he gagged and promptly barfed up his whole dinner. Jenna, for all of her, ahem, difficulties, was always a great eater and still is. Michaela got furious at this age that I had to feed her and swore off baby food and just lived on formula until she could feed herself a bit better. Alec is a mix of the two: willing to be fed, really enjoys certain foods- he could live on oatmeal and applesauce- but struggles with the texture thing.

This became abundantly clear last weekend, when after a good hearty dinner for all of us, we went outside to weed our front bed, which had been neglected for some time. I sat Alec down on a blanket in the shade, brought out some toys, and went to work weeding. (The girls also weeded for about 7 minutes, then Michaela said quite hesitantly, "Oohh, Tomer (a boy in our neighborhood that the girls have played with) is outside... I'm going to ask him if his mom had her baby..." which was code for This is really boring and I'm trying to casually get out of it. ) Alec, however, was much more interested in the grass and started pulling it out by the handful and stuffing it in his mouth. Which made him gag. And made him puke. So after working for about 15 minutes, I had a barf-covered kid and blanket to deal with. I stripped him of his clothes outside, went inside and gave him a bath. When we came back out, I was smart and just put him in the stroller, where he promptly fell asleep.

But this week we started giving him some more table foods: the meatloaf, grilled cheese, pastas, bread, etc. Some he really likes and some he is indifferent to. At least he's trying and tolerating it a bit better. The one thing he does seem to really enjoy eating- which the girls never, ever paid attention to- is the cat's food.

He'll gobble that by the handful, and just smiles sweetly, oh so sweetly up at me, when I say in my best firm Mommy voice, "No, Alec! Yucky!"