Local Baby Eats Construction Paper; Throws Carrots On the Wall

AP Six-month-old El seems to have her edibles confused with her arts and crafts, reports her exhausted mother, Plain Jane. Her story has brought greater awareness of a common phenomenon experienced in over 90 percent of homes in which a young baby is trying his or her first foods. This reporter spoke with Plain Jane in an interview that lasted nearly fifteen minutes, not because of the breadth of the subject matter, but because Ms. Jane's cognitive functioning is so impaired by sleep deprivation that it was difficult for her to verbalize a coherent thought.

After sorting fact from inarticulate babbling (the mother's, not the baby's), this reporter learned that yesterday, shortly after returning from the grocery store, Ms. Jane put her baby down on the living room floor to play while she quickly put the groceries away. When coughing and sputtering noises sounded from the baby a few minutes later, Ms. Jane ran into the room to discover that little El had located a tiny triangle of blue construction paper, a remnant of a recent project her four-year-old sister had been working on, and promptly stuffed it as far into her mouth as possible. Ms. Jane attempted in vain to extract the bit of paper, which she stated was visible but partially digested, and therefore plastered quite firmly to the back of El's throat. El, for her part, succeeded in fighting off her mother and swallowing the paper; her ensuing smile led Ms. Jane to conclude that consuming her unpalatable find had been El's intention all along. Later, at the supper table, little El pitched her bowl of pureed carrots against the kitchen wall, splattering its bright orange contents in an uncannily accurate star pattern. Ms. Jane claimed to have a great deal of fun cleaning what she described as a "huge" mess, and stated she was glad she had spent so much time shopping for and preparing the food that her baby tossed at the wall and that her four-year-old sat and stared at with undisguised revulsion for the entire dinner hour.

At the risk of committing the sin of editorializing, this reporter may have sensed a note of sarcasm in Ms. Jane's statements. This reporter may go so far as to speculate that Ms. Jane's expectations of her children's eating habits might be a tad unrealistic. If so, this family's story should serve as a cautionary tale to all babies, who ought to consider spending more energy helping their parents understand that the more effort and thought put into a meal by the parents, the more flavor and fun it extracts from the food. Non-edible items are far more interesting and tasty, and should never be denied even when the parent might mistakenly view the item as "dangerous" or "a choking hazard." These are deliberate falsehoods perpetuated by a parent-friendly media. Or so claims a certain highly articulate baby who made these statements while her mother wasn't listening, and asked to remain anonymous.