A Carnival of Eating! From first foods to teenage table manners.

As I put Ciaran to sleep tonight I realised that we are only a few weeks away from offering finger food for the first time; starting a journey of hilarious expressions, gagging incidents, mess, mess and more mess which won’t end until my darling son has grown-up, left the nest and has someone else to clean up when he falls asleep eating a pizza, or manages to explode a ginsters cornish pasty in the microwave (I have such high hopes for my children!).

I then decided to be brave and start a Carnival of Eating, similar to the Sleep is for the weak’s marvellous sleep deprivation carnival. So here’s the deal:

I desperately need your best post about your child’s eating habits, from the nightmares of pureeing and the baby led weaning days, to the embaressing antics of your teenagers at the table (thank God my Mum is not IT savvy enough to blog lol!).

You can write it specially for me (ha ha ha) or take a nostalgic trip down your archives. It can range from serious advice on how to get the little darlings eating nicely or a favourite family recipe, to a look at what we do when it all goes wrong (I speak as a woman who has spent days picking squashed raspberries out of the carpet).

Hopefully we’ll all gain some tips from each other, or at the very least laugh at the familiar problems and sight of our darling other halves covered in their child’s food.

Please give me a link to your post in the comments section below or email a link to your post to me ellenheaney@yahoo.com by 8 pm Sunday 4 October, I’ll post up the festival of food on Monday (when given time by the beastie boys).