Peanut, peanut butter, and Eli!

Warning: I just re-read this and realized it is a ridiculously long story, so no need to read the whole thing (though I refuse to delete it). The gist: Though I was scared to give Eli peanut butter, his Pop-pop gave him some one day without me knowing. Now he likes peanut butter. Look how cute he is eating it (or playing with cups in the middle of eating peanut butter):


Full story: I had been deathly afraid of feeding Eli peanut butter. He had some food issues early on, as you may recall (or food issues via breastmilk), so I've been kind of worried as he's moved on to solid foods generally. But peanut allergies seem, to me, to be at this whole other scary level. I feel like every new parent is told to BEWARE of peanuts. So even though there is really no reason to expect Eli to have peanut issues (neither Josh nor I have them), I was still WAY nervous.

But Eli isn't a huge fan of a lot of protein sources (he eats LOTS of cheese, which results in really gross poops), so I really wanted to explore our option. I had the idea that I'd eventually give him peanut butter some weekday when Josh was home from work (so he could call 911/the pediatrician while I soothed Eli) and the car was gassed up and ready for a run to the emergency room.

Enter the grandparents...or, more specifically, Pop-pop: So we were at the outlets with the grandparents, and Pop-pop took Eli into Harry and David...Later we were eating lunch and I brought up how I was scared to give Eli peanut butter, and Pop-pop said, "Oh. I just gave him a sample of some kind of peanut-buttery something or other at Harry and David. I figured if it's out there for the whole world to consume, there can't be anything wrong with it." Of course. Anyway, Eli didn't die. He didn't have any allergic reaction whatsoever.

So now I thought, yay, new protein source. But then, Eli didn't like it. Argh. So I tried and tried again, and finally, yesterday, he ate (and seemingly enjoyed) peanut butter. I feel like he's a real little kid now! So here he is, happy after having eaten his peanut butter. And how the heck did I make this the longest story in the world?