No, not soft foods for my 87-year-old mother. She’s still able to enjoy a pretty varied diet, with some restrictions. The soft foods prompting this post are the ones I’m feeding my 14-year-old son. He had a tooth removed a couple of days ago.

His top left front tooth has been a problem for years. When the permanent tooth came in, the baby tooth never came out until we took him to the dentist to have it pulled. Then he fell on the jungle gym on the school playground when he was in third grade, chipping and traumatizing the same tooth. It’s been crooked and severely out of place, a problem we hoped would be fixed by his braces. Nope. That tooth stayed in place, and all of the other top teeth moved up. As it turns out, the thing was ankylosed (it had fused to the bone.) And when they looked at it with the super duper fancy 3-D looker atter, it was crumbling beneath the surface of the gums. So off to the oral surgeon we went, and now the tooth is gone. He’ll get a placeholder until he stops growing, after which he can have an implant put in.

Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out how to keep this kid fed on soft foods for a week. For those who have never lived with a 14-year-old boy, they eat A LOT. His typical bedtime snack would be an entire meal for me – a whole apple, a large bowl of ice cream, and add in a plate of cheese and crackers. This is a kid who can’t afford to lose weight; he already looks as if he’s made from clothes hangers. I’ve been shoveling oatmeal and applesauce his way. I made a huge batch of mashed potatoes. Despite the heat wave, he seems okay with soup, so whew! We’re stocked up on pudding cups, ice cream and frozen fruit bars. He likes yogurt.

Oh and I’ve been doing this over and over: