I get it; he eats big people food

Isaac and I had been scrapping for a week or so at mealtimes. He would seem receptive to the idea of having a spoon shoved in his mouth with strained [insert fruit or vegetable] and oatmeal for a time, and then just sour on the idea totally after a few bites. The only things he enjoyed were from the cracker food group; Cheerios, vegetable crackers, Gerber Puffs (aka Baby Crack). I was a little puzzled because, so far, every other finger food I had laid before him had resulted in a turned-up baby nose.

Then I started getting these reports from his day care about what he was eating during the day. Here was what he ate for ONE meal on Tuesday:
*Belizean sweetcorn & kidney beans with tomatoes and bell peppers
*Rice
*Peaches
*Strained sweet potatoes with b-milk and cereal
*Cheerios

And again on Wednesday:
*Cheddar-apple muffin
*Mexican tortilla soup
*Corn bread
*Strained chicken & apples

Here at Chez O'Neal, we don't often serve such exotic dishes, but I get the point -- Boy wants to eat big people food now. And lots of it. So I picked him up a little early from school on Wednesday after conferencing with a coworker about what to feed as finger foods, which I had done millions of times over. I picked a can of whole sweet peas off the pantry shelf, revealing a secret can of Chef Boyardee ravioli behind it. Hmm, I think. I heated up both things for Isaac and brought along a slice of wheat bread. Unlike the million times over that I had previously tried the finger food shtick, however, it was like something suddenly clicked. You had never, ever seen such a delighted baby picking up handfuls of squishy peas, or wiping his face with (quartered) ravioli innards. He was enjoying himself so much, picking through this unstrained, yet mushy food, smearing it on his tray and dropping it on the floor. It was as if he was saying to me, "Mom, you understand me!"

At this same mealtime, yet another unbelievable thing. While Isaac can drink very well from a normal cup when assisted, he never really got the whole sippy-cup deal. The sippy is for teething, right? All his sippy-lids have deep gouges on the undersides from him trying to whittle down Monolith and Monolith Jr. (he sprouted tooth #2, by the way, on Jan. 2). So here he is, eating his ravioli, and here I am, a very thirsty lady. I drank some water from his sippy cup. He saw me doing this, stopped what he was doing, and reached out both hands for it. I hand it to him, he grabs a handle in each hand, and starts chugging, I mean ACTUALLY DRINKING, from the sippy cup. I just erupted into an enormous giggle-fit. I suppose he will, after all, do things at a time when he is good an ready.

Now we eat all but one item per meal as 100% finger foods that Isaac can pick up and eat at will. He adores cheese cubes, ravioli (of course), quesadillas, and bagels. He has yet to figure out about fruit cocktail and eggs, but we will keep trying those again. Anyway, if one can live with the mess and be a little patient, one would definitely prefer this method to the labor-intensive baby-feeding we did prior to this. We can actually eat together if we wanted to. How messed up is that?