When Sophie Eats...

Warning: The following post contains images of an explicit nature. If you are offended by smiles, "bottling", giggles, "food play", and overt displays of cuteness, proceed with extreme caution.

Sophie loves to eat. She will eat just about anywhere. She has eaten at restaurants, in hotel rooms, on busses and in cars, on planes, on our back porch, at her high-chair, in the living room, you name the place, and she can turn it into a dining area.

When Sophie likes something, she can't get enough of it. She will shove and shove and shove until there is so much food in her mouth that she can not swallow. Only once have we seen this taken to the extreme and she subsequently created a Jackson Pollack on the restaurant table with an intriguing palette of pita, parsley, and feta cheese.

Sophie is right handed. We learned this because when Sophie does not like something she throws it, with her right hand, as far from her mouth as is humanly possible. Perhaps I should add baseball pitcher to the list of things that Sophie might be when she grows up but I think that would only work is she tried to eat the baseball.

Our ultimate goal is to eventually have Sophie eating the same foods that we eat. Though she looks like she would love a helping of anduille and shrimp skewers with a chimmichurri sauce, I don’t think it’s a good idea to give her stuff like that yet. In the meantime, she is eating “regular food”. Deep down, I can’t help but wonder that we are scarring her irreparably by not letting her know what the Gerber baby looks like. I guess we’ll have to deal with those consequences in the future.

In the meantime, we have been trying out all sorts of food and have learned quite a few things about Sophie that can be summed up in simple lists of what she likes and does not like to eat.

Sophie likes but is not limited to:

Frozen strawberry banana yogurt smoothies: She can finish off a 4 oz bottle with no apparent brain-freeze. The way she “one-hands” her bottles makes me think that she’ll slinging around those liters of beer at Hofbrauhaus in no time.

Frozen Peach mango yogurt smoothies: See above.

Hot Dogs: O.K. Who doesn't like hot dogs?

Ice Cream: Who doesn't like ice cream either?

Green beans: It is not a very technical means of measuring but her mouth is so large that she can fit 12 whole green beans, cooked, in her mouth at once.

Ham, tofu, green bean stir fry: She has a habit of picking out the green beans but seems to savor this odd concoction.

Smoked turkey leg: We will have to watch for a better image of this one at next years Taste of Chicago.

Turnip Greens: She enjoys them cut up and mixed with the turkey.

Carrots: Only when cooked in the broth with greens and smoked turkey leg. Do the Chinese know how to make Soul Food?

Oatmeal: When mixed with apples, peaches, or banana. Hell, I think we could even put turnip greens in this stuff and she'd eat it.

Bottled Water: We can't figure out which she likes better, the water, or the bottle. Who needs Fisher Price when Mountain Spring and Evian make such great toys?

Noodles: We had enough of those revealing noodle shots in China so I don't think I need to add any more.

Bananas: Best fed in order to amuse her as we put her hair up in that ridiculous pony tail. The funniest part of Sophie liking bananas is that Ileana HATES them. So much that she refuses to touch the banana. When feeding them to Sophie, she looks like she is handling nuclear waste and might have an easier time if she did so in a Tyvek suit.

Sophie does not like:

Zucchini in tomato sauce w/ Mediterranean spices: Note the various locations on Ileana's shirt where Sophie was practicing her pitching.

Any food served at an inappropriate temperature: This is very subjective but Sophie’s melt-downs when this occurs are too much. As if she will starve to death instead of eating food that is not “just right”. She even threw a fit when her frozen smoothie melted!

Any food that is bland: “Lake Shore Drive Seasoning” from The Spice House, here in Chicago is quickly becoming a requirement in all of Sophie’s savory foods. Plain potatoes, carrots, or pasta all end up on the floor. She despises plain rice cereal and we have not had the guts to try giving her plain oatmeal.

-Chris