Baby-led whining

Recently Mae has turned into a fussy little tyke and I'm finding this to be something of a knock to my street cred as the baby-led weaner on the block. Despite all my best efforts, she is now rejecting previous favourites and scuppering my claims to have a baby that "just eats what we eat, really".

I persist though; yesterday I served her greek salad. "She likes onion, she's had feta and olives before, and cucumber and tomato are staples", I reason. "Oh no!" she whines, literally (her second word after "uh-oh" was "no", and now she has combined the two into a rather plaintive "oh no!")

She ate the tomatoes and the pitta bread, but not the bits with tsatsiki on; I had to get the plain yoghurt out as a dip instead.

"How has this happened?" I wonder. I think back to the weeks where I was applying for jobs rather then whipping up exotic offerings and she had pasta bows nightly. Is it my fault? Maybe taste buds and preferences are formed in the three weeks between ten months, three weeks and eleven months, two weeks? Maybe she saw another kid rejecting things and so she started getting ideas? Maybe she knows I'm writing a blog and wants to scupper it because she's really a teenager inside a 74cm frame?

Or maybe it's just what kids do. I mean I know they eat curry in India and sushi in Japan and no doubt greek salad in Greece, but I'm sure they are fussy too, and have preferences within their relative cuisines. And it does seem to me that her taste buds have become more sensitive lately - the way she shudders when biting down on an olive is entirely physical and in no way a game. I think we'll just ride it out and be thankful that she will eat any amount of fruit, cheddar, tofu, beans, pasta, bread and tomatoes - lamenting my 13-month old's distaste for feta and olives seems a very minor and very silly lament.

Still loving her pasta bows

And as for my street cred? I'll just talk up her other skills instead - she stacked cups the other day, and she's got four molars, and isn't "oh no" is a two syllable word? Phew, I feel better already.