Food and drink

Apparently watermelon for Jane is like Scooby snacks for Shaggy [and Scooby too, but you'd expect that, no?]

To date, Sweet Jane has shown absolutely no interest in food at all. At her last few visits with the pediatrician, he has asked "Is she interested in food? Does she try to grab your food?" Aside from the fact that she's on her first nap when we eat breakfast and headed to bed as we're sitting down to dinner, I just don't think she has much interest in food right now. Honestly, we've mashed up banana, given her a taste of mashed up avocado; heck, we even got these little rice cookies made especially for babies. No deal.

Watermelon, however, is a whole other story. We were having dinner last night and had some watermelon for dessert. On a whim, I gave her a tiny piece to suck on. The reaction was sort of like the one I remember seeing on the face of the kid who "experimented" with drugs in one of those mandatory school indoctrination films. [Remember those? Where a bunch of nebbishy junior high kids have somehow scored the kind of pot only Bob Marley roadies could find. And what's more: They're dead set on making their one friend try it. Said friend immediately becomes Ray Milland from "The Lost Weekend." I digress.]

After the tiniest taste of watermelon, Jane's eyes opened wide(r), her little arms started to wave and wiggle, and she pretty much went bonkers any time we tried to pull the fruit away from her. Crazy, no? [And we didn't even need peer pressure.]

Along similar lines of food discovery, we've determined that Samson has no use for flavors or names when picking out ice cream. He goes for the color. And by "goes for," I mean shows the same palette preference as a girl from the Valley circa 1983. The last time we went out for ice cream, he had this electric green concoction that was supposed to taste like sour apples. It was sweet enough that he'll probably have cavities in his permanent molars when they come in six or seven years from now.

Today, he opted for ice cream that was pink and blue and yellow and about as tasty as you'd imagine those three colors/flavors of ice cream to be.

Of course, his selection criteria make sense in a way. Despite the fact that chocolate and strawberry are great and classic flavors, unless you know they're good, you're probably not going to opt for the cylinder of light brown or pale pink looking stuff. And forget about vanilla...