Procrastinet

Barfblogging

filed under: Dadditudes , Stuff you never, ever needed to know

We used to call Max "The Emperor" a lot. He was a charming, charismatic, outgoing and generally pleasant baby, but he had demands. And woe betide anyone who refused to fulfill those demands. The Emperor was unamused.

He's still got firm opinions about what needs to happen and when, but he delivers them mostly in a more typical toddlery fashion now: pointing, yelling, whining, etc. The British would call it "whinging," and actually that captures the sound of it better.

But in his high chair, he's still the Emperor. Last night I plonked a small pile of green beans in front of him, holding the chicken nuggets in reserve so that, hopefully, he would eat something that was neither bread nor breaded. With the affronted reserve of a fine diner who finds a roach in their crudite, he carefully picked up each string bean, held them out over the edge of the tray between two fingers - with, I swear to you, the other fingers extended delicately like a marm sipping tea - and dropped them one at a time on the floor.

Fine.

So we gave him his chopped up chicken nuggets. Most of which he ate, with the usual tithe that had to be ritually smeared into his hair, fed to the cat, wiped on the sofa, or scattered over his head like fairy dust. When he was done, the Emperor requested removal from his throne ("Upf!"). I fished into his bib to retrieve whatever food had been lost, and pulled out a handful of chopped up nuggets and one whole one.

"Finish those," I said, "and then you can come up."

"Upf..." he said, sulkily, and set about finishing off the pile.

When he was done with the chopped bits, he began waving the whole nugget (one of the Weaver kind which is, horrifyingly, pressed into the shape of a small drumstick) like a mad conductor. "Eat it, honey," said his mother. "But it's whole, so chew it up good. With your teeth."

"Teees" says Max. And shoves the entire nugget into his mouth whole.

The process of attempting to ingest a whole nugget gave Max (and, let's be honest, his mother and I) great amusement for a few minutes. Every time he chewed, some of it would push out of his mouth, where he would stuff it back in with both hands. Then he'd laugh about it, which would blow bits of nugget across the table. Then we'd laugh at that, which would make him hambone it even more. At one point I'd swear his hand disappeared up to the wrist and re-emerged covered in nugget.

Then it all went wrong. He's laughing, grinning, stuffing away, and suddenly a bit of nugget must have hit the wrong bit of the back of his throat. His brow furrowed. "Aaaah!" he said.

"What'sa matter, baby?" I asked.

"AAAAA!" he said, looking around with increasing franticness.

"Well, spit it out!" says his mother.

So Max opens his mouth and pushes with his tongue and the unswallowed bits of nugget fall out onto his bib. "Good!" says Lisa. "See? That was eas--"

His mouth still open, Max's eyes widened a bit. And, like a grade school science fair paper mache volcano overflowing with baking soda and vinegar, the remainder of his dinner came bubbling calmly out.

Max seemed confused as to what was going on, and began looking around for the cause. Which, of course, merely dispersed the barf over more of the floor, the high chair, and himself.

When he was all done, Lisa and I looked at each other with the resigned look which will be familiar to all parents. It's the look you share whenever your child does something biological and gross that will require a great deal of completely yucky cleaning. It's a resigned, passive, defeated look. But there's also a strange, martyr-like acceptance. "Yep," says the look, "so that happened..."

Max paused for a moment, as if waiting to see if anything else was going to go awry. Clearly, all systems had returned to equilibrium. He looked at us, happily. "Upf!" he cried.

So Lisa drew a bath, and I tried to strip him naked without smearing more of dinner on himself or our bed, and I tried unsuccessfully to keep the cats from eating off the burpee I used to clean the high chair and thereby getting digested nugget on themselves, and I disassembled the high chair to clean all the crannies that had gotten doused.

And next time, when the Emperor says it's time to get Upf, well then upf he will get.

Posted by rjt at December 7, 2004 12:29 PM