This week I’d been planning on writing about all the many and varied foods Joe has tried, but then we went away for a week and I found something else to write about…
On the way home, we’d planned to stop and visit some friends and this meant we had to take the M25. Yes, I know. We got on to the M25. We saw a sign. There was a broken down vehicle and traffic was backed up from where we just got on… to where we planned to get off. Cheers, Sod and your stupid law. The signs said 40, but the traffic was going much, much slower. Thankfully, both boys were asleep. To begin with.
Harry woke first, saying, sleepily, “Are we there?” Then Joe woke, saying, lustily, “FEED ME! FEED ME RIGHT NOW! WHERE ARE YOU? I CAN’T SEE YOU! FEED ME FEED ME FEED ME!” “Won’t be long, sweetie,” I cooed, hissing, “Give him his caterpillar!” to Harry. Joe chewed on his caterpillar for just long enough to realise that NO MILK WAS COMING OUT OF IT and started to yell again. To be fair to him, he wasn’t crying (is there anything worse than being stuck in a car with a distressed baby?), but he certainly wasn’t happy. And we knew that he had to be hungry.
Kneeling on my seat, I pulled my seatbelt around my back and reached over to hand Joe an Organix Crunchy Ring. He’s been getting more and more adept at eating them by himself, holding them over his thumb and gumming away until they dissolve, but I still wasn’t happy to have him eating something so solid when I couldn’t see his face (you know, to check on that old choking thing). So I knelt and I leaned and Joe ate the last two corn rings. Happily. Yes, the last two.
Of course, that wasn’t the only food I had for Joe. I’m not an idiot. I had a couple of Organix pots – his favourite, in fact: Fruity Chicken. Only they were in the boot. And we were on the motorway. Harry had a pear, so I snaffled that and, peeling it with my teeth, mashed it in a little pot I’d had the foresight to buy, clean and stash in Joe’s nappy bag. Kneeling on the seat again, I leaned over and poked the spoon in the area I assumed Joe’s mouth to be. “Is he eating it?” I asked Harry. “Yeah,” said Harry, vaguely, staring out of the window. It wouldn’t do. There was only one thing for it. I had to climb over.
Putting the lid on the pot (yes, I had a pot and a lid! Go me!), I stashed the spoon in a sterile location (oh okay, my own mouth) and squeezed between the front seats, dropping into the meagre space between the two car seats. Sideways (because I certainly wouldn’t fit widthways) and landing on Harry’s arm. Joe, at least, was delighted to see me, giving me a gummy grin, into which I shoved more pear. Which dribbled back out. Along with the rest of the pear I’d fed him from the front which, for some unknown reason, he’d apparently decided to store in his cheeks until he could impress me with his new regurgitation skills. Great.
For the next half hour, Joe beamed, chunks of pear dropping out with every smile (I’m telling you, LOADS more came out than I’d put in), Harry nursed his crushed arm, David stewed and fumed quietly and I wrote this blog post in my head. It was like therapy. So thanks.
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Keris Stainton
http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk
19 August 2009
LOL Keris – I just hope there wasn’t a police car monitoring it all …. or will you be blogging about being arrested for dangerous weaning on the M25 next week?
30 August 2009
Ha, I know. I was thinking if we’d been pulled over, I’d just have to say, “Okay, YOU deal with him then!”