The baby and eating

The baby has been eating very well since she started to eat. But now The Missy wants to do it by herself. It is very difficult to be creative the whole time about which foods to give her. We try to give her the same vegetables and meat that we are eating, cut into smaller pieces. I still try (that’s the only word that works here) to give her Purity or mashed foodies (e.g. avocado, bananas) at her mealtimes. But mostly she just shakes her head. I sometimes get something in when I can distract her with a plaything, but most of the times it is a shut mouth.
She loves sitting with us, and eating her own food, but I am not sure that she gets in a lot of it. As I have said, Petite Peu the dog, vacuums everything up that falls from her high chair. We catch her sneaking the food off between her legs, or over her shoulder. She then peers over the side of the chair with her mouth full of food, while biting on the side of the chair (see photo). We take this hook-on chair with us where-ever we go, and most of the time I am embarrassed about the food stains on the rim of the chair. It is never clean even when I have cleaned it!
She also tries to poke the food with the back of the spoon or the fork, or squash everything in her fists. Not for the squeamish! We just say to each other, “don’t look!”, and then wipe up afterwards! (This too will pass. This too will pass.)
We had a difficult Sunday. Mieka was not a happy baby, and we still don’t know why. Being difficult, and screaming the whole day. At 8pm we did our first (I am very proud for caving in only now) drive with her. We had a good laugh when the whining had the sound of a wind-down battery. It took five minutes and she was gone! Maybe we should have tried it a long time ago? But she still woke up after that. Is it the flu, the immunizations of Friday, earache, the tantrums? Dries and I are The Walking Dead today…
I have a suggestion for Google: a baby translator. Need I say more?