Although my precious baby A insists on wrestling the spoon from me and feeding herself, and consequently coating all kitchen surfaces in pureed fruit and veg of varying shades of the rainbow, I’m pleased to report - after three weeks - she‘s enjoying her new culinary adventures enormously and the whole solids thing has been a resounding success thus far. Pears rule. Life is good. (Now if she would just stop vomiting up her milk on my library books. But that’s another story.)


I am head chef of the baby food section, while H continues to prepare the grown ups’ meals, which he does incredibly well. I think I’ve mentioned before that I tend not to bother with our food preparation because it takes me twice as long to cook and the end result does not justify the effort, to put it nicely. And H isn’t one of those guys that chokes it down to make you feel better. He will let me know by subtly pushing his plate away and making up an excuse about not being hungry, or just not liking lemons, or toffee, or tofu, or water. I accuse him of being a food snob. He is the second coming of Gordon Ramsay, with his bad temper and insanely high standards in the kitchen. Even though I’m furious when he won’t eat my tofu and vegetable kebabs or my Spanish omelette or my toffee mandarins (usually declaring it’s the last time I’ll ever cook him anything), the whole Gordon Ramsay thing is mildly endearing and has become a bit of a family joke.


However there’s been a lot of talk lately in both families about how like her father baby A is. They are mirror images. She’s his mini-me. I might as well buy her a baby-sized Foo Fighters shirt and a pair of long shorts and be done with it. She certainly has his foul temper. She gets unreasonably cranky with me if I don’t keep the pureed mash coming quickly enough, or if I have the blender going for too long, or if I’m too slow getting the milk bar ready for service.

So I got to thinking. My algebra is a bit rusty but…

If H = Gordon Ramsay, and
if Baby A = mini H,
does Baby A therefore = mini Gordon Ramsay?

Is this what I have in store for me when A reaches school age?