I worked from home yesterday because I have back to back meeting starting from 7am (starting work so early is a torture like asking me to die early early<\/strike>, don’t know how egghead does it).<\/p>\n
In the evening, I asked Tuyam to chop some iceberg lettuce and abalone mushroom, and then used this to make porridge for Zara. I left her with the instructions and went back to work.<\/p>\n
When dinner was served, I scooped out some of Zara’s porridge into her bowl (I prefer to feed Zara when I’m around instead of getting the maid to do it). I noticed instead of chopping up the lettuce or mushroom to real small (baby with 4 teeth) bite size, Tuyam has cut the lettuce to long strips, and the mushroom big chunks. Both are not easy to chew. How’s the little girl going to manage?<\/p>\n
I asked Tuyam, what happened here? She said “tak cukup kecil ke (is it not small enough)?” I told her both are equally difficult to chew, they are not fish or carrots, so these fibrous or rubbery stuff should be chop real finely like we chop up garlic for stirfrying.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I scooped smaller pieces of the chopped up vege and mushroom and started feeding Zara, and reminded her to chew.<\/p>\n
She took a mouth full, chewed real hard. Started whining, “Errr..” Gave her another mouth, she took it, and whined further. When the 3rd spoon reached her mouth, she pursed her lips, refused to opened again, and just turned her head away from the spoon. This didn’t look like her usual shake-head-don’t-want-any-more reaction. Let me try again.<\/p>\n
I dipped a pair of kitchen scissors into the porridge to try to cut the vege and mushroom into smaller pieces. Then offered it to her, she pursed her lip still, and looked the other way.<\/p>\n
We told her, “Zara, you try first, mummy cut up everything smaller already<\/span>“. Aaah, she finally accepted the spoon. We continued to feed her, and she continued to eat it, until she was full, she started shaking her head to indicate she didn’t want any more.<\/p>\n So, our little critic has come out with her own way of giving different ratings to her food:
\nThe lips are pursed, head to one side.
\n“Zara, please. You try first<\/span>”
\nStill the lips are pursed, but she looked at me
\n“Zara, really, you look at the spoon, every thing small small already<\/span>”
\nLips still pursed, but she looked at the spoon
\n“See, mummy didn’t bluff you, you try first. Please<\/span>”
\nOpened her mouth, took the porridge.<\/p>\n
\n4 star<\/span><\/strong> : eat, and eat, and eat<\/span> — food is really good, right consistency for me, thumbs up to the chef
\n3 star<\/strong><\/span> : eat, eat again, then turned head, pursed lip<\/span> — food is good, but not right consistency for me (like this case), please do some thing to correct it.
\n2 star<\/strong><\/span> : eat for a while, then shake head<\/span> — food is bearable, but enough is enough.
\n1 star<\/strong><\/span> : 1st bite already sha<\/span>ke head<\/span> — I hate this please feed this to the cat<\/strike><\/p>\n