Marlo Doesn't Like My Cooking

I've made the mistake of introducing jarred food to Marlo. Don't get me wrong - jarred food is just fine, in fact I secretly love jarred food. It's so fun to shop for. Like my friend Andrea said, you can spend hours in the baby food aisle just staring at all the combinations. But it hurts my feelings that Marlo likes jarred food better than mommy's food. I have a pretty good hunch it's a texture issue, since her mother has major texture standards when it comes to her food - it's really no surprise. The only foods I can get smashed finely enough to even hold a candle next to the smoothness of jarred food are sweet potatoes and bananas. Surely not coincidentally, Marlo doesn't have a problem with these foods when I make them for her. It's the peas and the carrots I can't get her to swallow (literally - she gags). The recent trip to my parents' in Ohio loaded me up with jarred foods, and Marlo has just been havin' a ball gobbling up all the deliciousness that I spoon into her mouth from a little plastic tub, instead of our little ceramic bowls.

Ah well - I refuse to give up, even after several failed attempts at making her new foods. Take last night, I tried making spinach and potatoes for her. Boiled up the potato, and steamed the spinach. Dumped it into the blender and out came a gummy, tar-like green completely unappetizing mush. Apparently, my blender couldn't handle the spinach and all the over mixing brought out the starches from the potato and voila - green paste. So instead Marlo ate Gerber Organic Peas and Carrots and loved every bite. (Wipe away tear)

I'm hoping this situation improves with age, and that when she's 8 or 9 months we can sit together at the dining room table and I can just grind up table scraps from mommy and daddy's plates in a food mill and feed it lovingly to the chunkster (first Jeff and I will actually have to start sitting at the dining room table and not on the couch in front of the tv). Because, there's something about jarred meat that I just can't bring myself to buying and feeding to Marlo. So I'm hoping that before we reach the protein stage, she'll start tolerating more rustic textures. But for now, I'll enjoy shopping my favorite jarred food brands and Marlo will enjoy eating them.