Little Foodie

Here's Xanthe, my little foodie, dining at Mama Testa's in San Diego. (Good food, very rainbow friendly. A family of eight could not be more out of place there, but it was fun.) When Xanthe joined our family, she was 13 months old and all her food had been pureed and served through a bottle. Her bottle had the top of the nipple cut off so that the food or milk would come out very fast. At first, she wouldn't take her bottle from us, until I figured out that she liked the formula scalding hot. I wish I had a video of it; she could gulp down a whole bottle in seconds flat. Five or six seconds to drink eight ounces.

When we got her home, I put her in a high chair and put Cheerios on the tray. She played with them but didn't put them in her mouth. All the other kids demonstrated how to pick one up and eat it, so she mimicked them. The first one, she picked up and aimed for her mouth. She hit her forehead. It was funny, but heartbreaking. She had never eaten solid food!

So she had some struggles. She went hungry, I know she did. All this time later, I could swear she's still making up for it. Spicy food has never bothered her. She likes everything, which is great. Except that if she sees that someone has something she doesn't have, she goes nuts. She gets frantic at a party where there are lots of different choices. She wants all of them. Sometimes, she says, "My tummy hurts. I ate too much. I'll just eat a little more." If she sees a McDonald's billboard, she's suddenly hungry. If there's an empty water bottle in the car, she's desperately thirsty. I realized how intense her eating habits are this summer at the pool. A kid near me opened a little bag of Doritos and it make a whoosh noise. Instantly, I was thinking, "You fool! Put that away! Xanthe is going to be crying for Doritos now." Sure enough, Xanthe got out of the pool and came running to me. "I need chips! I need chips weally bad!" I don't even think she connected why she felt like she needed chips. It was an instinct.

In a way, it's cute, her predictability. Every morning, she has to have two kinds of cereal, not just one. Her idiosyncrasies are adorable. But I also worry that maybe the desperate need for food is indicative of some deeper need that is not being addressed. I don't worry about it too much, but maybe I should. Some of you may have answers on this one. I'm sure some of you have food bills to send me from playdates with Xanthe. It's your own fault for keeping food in your house. You should have known better! It's a good thing she's so darn lovable.