A Boy’s Life

I’m watching Robin eat squash soup, all by himself, with a spoon. I tried to get him just to drink it from a cup, but he wants to use the spoon. It’s crazy messy, but I know that it’s good practice for him, and that it’s toddler nature to want to do things the way his parents do. He’s no fool: he can see perfectly well that we eat our soup with spoons, and he’s made it his job to figure out how to do that too.

I actually love watching his care and concentration as he navigates the soup to his mouth. And more than that: there’s something deeply, intensely rewarding in watching my son slurp up his vitamin-packed, all-organic, all-local, cooked-from-scratch squash soup. It’s like with every bite he takes my hindbrain purrs, good mom, good mom. Partly because food = love in my brain, but even more particularly because it’s squash soup, and I associate squash with my mom, so it’s like: Yes! I’m doing it right!

Weird the kind of deep buttons food can push for us, huh? Well, at least the mess is pretty localized, so it’ll be easy enough to mop up later.