Attack of the munchies

Grant is growing fast, nearly walking (yes, really), and pretty much determined to eat anything that crosses his path. I'm all for the slow and steady approach to kids learning to eat- start with some baby oatmeal powder, progress into pureed peaches, applesauce, carrots, you know, the usual. Grant has a very different agenda. He wants to eat it NOW and he doesn't care what I think. In the last week or so, this has taken on a fairly extreme degree. A few examples;

I gave Grant a large, sturdy carrot to nibble on while I was getting dinner ready. He was in my arms so I could see and hear his every move. I assumed he'd sort of suck on it, perhaps scrape at it a bit with his teeth and maybe gum it, too. Nope. He carefully used his 6 thick fat little teeth to actually bite off tiny pieces (about the size of rice grains) and eat them. He managed to eat quite a bit before getting frustrated. I then fed him 10 ounces of steamed and pureed carrots, which for his body weight and age is a really obscene quantity. That boy loves carrots.

Today I was cleaning the kitchen as Grant crawled around. He was happily banging on things with a wooden spoon and generally just being a cute little fellow. I was engrossed in scrubbing something when I noticed Grant had gotten awfully quiet. I looked down to find that Grant had somehow opened my large cardboard box full of ripe tomatoes (an achievement unto itself), swiped two large Roma (sauce variety) tomatoes, and was fully eating one of them while clutching the other one in his hand. He was covered in tomato seeds and juice, and absolutely thrilled with his achievement. I was dumbfounded as I watched him efficiently bite off appropriately sized nibbles of tomato (with the skin on!), gum them thoroughly in his mouth, swallow them, and bite off a new nibble. Unreal. I took the second tomato away from him because I was concerned he'd get indigestion, having never eaten something that acidic before. Needless to say, he wailed at me quite angrily.

I've begun to let go of my assumptions of how the kid should eat. I'm buying him things that just make no sense for his age- like cottage cheese (he loves the curds) and regular tofu (fun experiment for tomorrow!). I think we might just need to say farewell to the purees way before I had anticipated. And that is OK.