Since Kaia got sick a few weeks ago, she’s been very hit or miss with a lot of the foods I’ve made. Some days, she will eat an adult sized portion of roasted carrots. The next day, she won’t even look at them. I tried making French lentils and serving them plain to her late last week. She ate a lot of them the first day, and ever since, she refuses to eat them. I’m not sure who she learned this from, but she started gathering all the lentils and tucking them into her bib, as though I would not even notice and assume she ate them – a very sneaky baby!

I figured it would make sense to just blend them into a soup. I had made fresh stock just a couple days ago in my Instant Pot and just had to saute some onions, aromatics, vegetables, and spices with it all. She’s always loved soup and has enjoyed the matzo ball soup that Chris has gotten me twice over the last three weeks. So I made the soup and blended all the lentils so that it was just a creamy, smooth bean soup. When I told her she was having soup, her face lit up, and it was clear she was excited… and likely anticipating a clear soup like matzo ball. So when she saw her bowl, she got mad and yelled, “No! No! No!” over and over and waved the bowl away. I didn’t push. I just put my bowl of soup up on her tray and ate my soup, spoon by spoon, in front of her, emphasizing how tasty and yummy it was. Finally, I watched her as she watched me, and I saw that she was getting FOMO. So I tried again: I put a small amount of soup on a spoon and lifted it to her lips, and finally, she opened her mouth and took it. She winced a little, then swallowed, smiled, and exclaimed, “Tasty! More!”

Win win for me. And then she proceeded to eat an entire bowl, insisting that she put the spoon in her mouth herself.