It's feeding time

Feeding time with Harry is a pleasure – most of the time. He loves his food and will eat just about anything we give him, including cauliflower, courgettes, broccoli, potatoes, fish, meat, porridge and so on. There’s something really satisfying about watching him enjoy his food – and you can tell he’s enjoying it because he just sits there with his mouth wide open between spoonfuls.

His real favourite, though, is dessert. Harry’s definitely inherited Melissa’s sweet tooth and it’s now got to the stage where we have to hide his sweet while he’s eating his savoury food, otherwise you’ve got no chance. He can even recognise the ‘pop’ of a lid when we open a jar of rice pudding or egg custard, which means we have to take extra care when preparing his food.

As I say, generally feeding him is easy. He has, though, developed a new trick while eating which has made the experience more of a challenge. Basically, while feeding, he, for want of a better description, blows a raspberry. This can be extremely messy, as I found out while feeding him his cheesy broccoli bake the other night; I ended up wearing most of it.

The problem is, the first time it happened, both Melissa and I laughed. I know that’s completely the wrong thing to do, but it was comical watching Harry screw his face up while spraying food everywhere. Anyway, whenever he does it now, we both try to ignore it – although in reality we’re both trying desperately not to laugh.

I’ve no idea why he does it. It’s not as if he’s full – it can happen with the second mouthful of his food – and I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t like the taste, his mouth will be wide open again waiting for more food seconds later. Interestingly, though, I’ve not seen him do it with a dessert yet; presumably that’s just too valuable to waste.