we should have known

Ezekiel is seven months old today! And I think I am finally sufficiently resigned to what he ate for his first food that I am willing to share. (Stick with me, this gets good.)

Just for the record, my goal with each of my children has been to wait until they were seven months old before introducing their first foods. (Raw, tasty, organic, and nutritious food, of course. There's a whole detailed philosophy behind my choices there but lets just skip that for now.) Ezekiel decided to buck the trend by beginning to eat a little sooner and not in alignment with my nutritious food goals. I haven't really wanted to admit this, but as it seems to have been only the beginning of a rather unfortunate pattern for this little guy, here's my confession.

Ezekiel's first food was a nametag.

A paper nametag. With sticky on it. And permanent marker.

Yep.

We were at church one Sunday last month when I thought for some reason that it would be a good idea to put a nametag on him. You know, so that everyone would know his name. We were actually at church early enough (probably for the first time since Ezekiel was born) to write out nametags for ourselves and I was probably feeling good about not sneaking in late for once.

We were singing in the very front pew and I was trying to figure out whether and how to gently retrieve my dancing Priscilla from several feet ahead of me (did you know we attend a Nazarene church? where you only raise your hands while singing if you're feeling super spiritual? oh but there was my girl dancing and clapping her hands and stomping her feet and twirling around to praise music because that's what we do at home... and for some bizarre reason this was even a Sunday when it was weird karaoke praise music, like there wasn't even a real band there, I'm trying super hard not to comment any further on that though) and anyway Ezekiel somehow snatched that nametag and gobbled it right down while I was distracted. I was only able to get a teeny tiny piece of it out of his mouth.

Ughhh! Paper, child, really? For your first food??? And at barely six months old??

And he didn't even seem to mind. I think he was disappointed when I took it away.

And now, having developed this flair for eating paper, HE KEEPS TRYING TO DO IT. Any paper! He chewed off a chunk of one of Rilla's magazines, and he loves board books because he loves shoving the corners in his mouth, and it seems like every day now I have to take kids' drawings and paper plates out of his chubby little paws before he ingests them. The kids see him touch one of their books and say, "Noooooooo! I don't want Ezekiel to eat my book! No, Ezekiel!" I can't look at a newspaper with him near me because he will literally swipe it and try to gobble it down in one fell swoop.

And the best part is that it took me until this point in writing this blog post to finally realize why this is happening.

It's his name.

The poor kid can't help it. He's only taking after his namesake.

Remember what the Spirit of God commanded the prophet Ezekiel to do?

And He said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and He gave me the scroll to eat. Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

Ezekiel 3:1-3

So that explains it. I haven't been giving him any scrolls to eat, so what else is a boy named Ezekiel supposed to do but gobble down any paper he can find?

I'm wondering how this will impact our family life, though. God told the prophet Ezekiel to do some SUPER CRAZY STUFF. So paper-eating may be only the beginning of what we are dealing with here. Will toddlerhood find our Ezekiel laying on his side for months and acting out tiny sieges? When will the prophesying to the dry bones stuff begin?

What have we gotten ourselves into?