I like baby pictures in general, but I always wondered… does anybody really think this sort of thing is cute? It makes me want to gag!
In general I don’t like to see food on faces. For a while there it seemed like many adverts were having melted cheese run down people’s faces. It didn’t make *me *want to eat at the place advertised.
So to answer your question: no.
Generally, no. But we have one of MilliCal from the first time she experienced Chocolate Pudding. She didn’t merely eat it, she experienced it – all over her face. You can see a broad smile under all that chocolate. Pepper Mill took the photo, and liked it so much that she had it plastered on a sweatshirt.
We plan on using this to humiliate our daughter when she starts dating.
Seconded.
Hmm. I’ve never had much of a reaction to other people’s messy baby pictures, but there are a few pictures of my own kids that I absolutely love. Watching a baby explore a new food is often a delightful experience and the pictures bring back great memories. I have a picture of my daughter stripped to the waist and absolutely covered with spaghetti sauce and an enormous grin that makes me smile every time I see it. The first piece of cake is even better, although slightly less messy.
I do have a pretty high tolerance for messes, though.
Heh, I have a photo montage of my little one eating chocolate cake for the first time - the sheer happiness on his face is the good part: you can practically see the thought balloon over his head reading “Cake?! Yummm!”
Reaching for the cake:
Cake ingestion:
Enjoying the cake:
I’ve got one picture of my son eating his first birthday cake, and it’s not one of those “destroy the cake” deals. He’s just got some chocolate on his face and fingers.
“Spaghetti Jimmy” from the “what’s in your wawwet” commercial is just plain stupid.
Gag? Really?
A lot of you are waaaay too delicate to live in the same world I inhabit.
Smearing food on their face – and bodies – is what babies DO. It’s part of the learning process, how they explore their environment. Training them NOT to do that is part of the socialization process. It’s the same as babies at a certain stage who put everything in their mouth. So, in that light, yeah, it can be cute. I have a brother who was famous as a toddler for frequently ending up wearing more food than actually made it down his gullet. Now in his early 40s, he is still reminded of this occasionally.
Sure, I understand that. I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it. I just find it aesthetically unappealing, and thus, don’t see pictures of it as cute. (From the responses so far, I’d say people are much more likely to specifically find pictures of their own food-smeared babies as cute, which certainly makes sense.)
Pooping in their diapers is also what babies do, but I don’t wanna see pictures!! 
Well, if he still does that in his 40s … 
I know that my mother-in-law does, for sure. At our daughter’s first birthday party, she had a little cake all of her own. Well, they put it in front of her and got the cameras ready, but the little Torqueling is by nature a neat freak, and took tiny dabs of frosting off with her fingers, tasting daintily.
Well, MIL really wanted to photograph some baked-goods carnage, so she more or less smashed some cake onto her face to make a “good” picture. All of the cake damage you see in this picture was caused by my mother-in-law. Kinda bugged me, but ya know, pick your battles…
The baby is way cute, but definitely looks like she is planning evil. 
This happens all the time. Drove me batty when I was working doing children’s birthday parties at a family restaurant. I’ve NEVER seen a baby smash his own cake. Mom or Grandma always dirtied him up for the camera.
Most kids that age are about 4 seconds away from bursting into tears from all the noise and confusion and attention. Put the cake down and they’re just like, “What the &%$# is that?”
(Oh, and as for the OP, I concur. Messy food pics of my own kids are cute. Other people’s, not so much.)
Agreed. I’m sure it will be adorable if and when it’s my own kids, but now, it’s just gross.
In Monrovia, CA, there is (still?) a shop on Myrtle called Nummy Nums. It’s some kind of microwave baby food. There is a huge poster in the window of a baby with brown food smeared all over its face. It looks like it barfed all over itself, or worse. Totally revolting.
What? This little angel? Nah, no evil. She shares and everything.
(you brought this on yourself; Proud Daddy will take advantage of any opportunity to show off pictures)
I’ve literally never seen this in my life, and I’ve been to more kiddie birthdays than I can count in the last three years or so.
I do not concur with the OP - I always thought some messy kid pics were cute, others gross. Depends on the kid, how messy, etc.
While I approve completely the idea of humiliating offspring with baby pictures, do you really want her date to be picturing her covered with chocolate pudding?
I just went to a 1st birthday party where the kid had so much chocolate frosting on his face that he looked like he had a beard–none of it put there by parents. That kid killed that cake.
Awesome. I approve.