Cough Up the 79 Cents for the Gerber Crap, It's Worth It

Round about 5 months ago I lost my mind. I decided that rather than buy perfectly good (and organic mind you) jarred baby food from the neighborhood grocery store, I would make him his first baby foods from scratch. Please don't let this cloud your judgement of me, I am college educated and got that stupid little gold emblem in the corner of my degree to boot. But alas, I embarked on a journey that there was no turning back from. And so help me, if this child ever once raises his voice to me or comes home after curfew you better believe he's going to get an earfull of homemade baby food ranting and several pots and pans thrown at him. I'm just saying.

Homemade baby food preparation, regardless of what your Homemade Baby Food Preparation Made Simple book will tell you, is basically everything you don't have rolled into 1 fantastic endeavor. You don't have the 3 hours it takes to start, prepare, and finish the process, you don't have the 14 extra pans it will require to successfully cook and store said food, you definitely forgot several of the ingredients required for 1 "simple"recipe, and you sure as hell don't have the patience to follow the "simple" directions. Start with this knowledge and you'll be far ahead of where I was when I lost my brain function trying to accomplish it. I would right my own book but it would be short, "Homemade Baby Food Preparation Rules: smack yourself in the forehead with a large steel soup ladle. The end."

Here follows a pictographic montage of the destruction involved in baby food prep 101: (You hilariously think you'll accomplish this whole task while the baby is taking his nap. You funny, funny lady).

It starts out simple enough with a few pots, a food processor, and some storage containers.
Only you didn't have the storage containers when you started cooking so you had to stop mid-prep to run on an hour and a half errand to Babies R Us to get some. Oh and the baby gets up as soon as you return. Awesome.
Then while you're cleaning, peeling, chopping, steaming, boiling, and processing the food, the baby freaks out. Pause for baby redirecting and distraction techniques 1-4.
By now you're accumulating more dirty dishes, silverware, tupperware, and towels than you ever realized existed on this planet.
And then you start dropping miscellaneous pieces of food, ie a carrot which swiftly becomes part of the dog's organic food preparation, not what you had in mind when you lost your mind taking on this project.But finally, finally it is finished and your freezer is full of several home made baby food items which you cannot wait to try out on the baby because he is going to LOVE it, love, love, love...

Oh, he really hates, hates, hates it? He really makes a face so horrific you have to close your eyes lest you turn to stone? He really uses his entire body, cowlick to toenail, to gag on one small spoonful of carrots and sweet potatoes? Ha! Hahaha. Ha. Good one, Life! Life = 24, Me = 0.