November 13, 2006 by Amy

BNOTW

Just in case you’re not in the know, BNOTW stands for Big News Of The Weekend. Which we have, and I forgot to post. Duh.

Our darling little girl, genius that she is, has almost completely mastered self-feeding this weekend. Okay, well, not completely mastered, but she’s taken a huge leap forward.

Beanie was over with Mom Saturday, and since she’s my sista and has Refrigerator Rights and all (RR’s are those rights you extend to certain people, who can go in your fridge without asking and help themselves to whatever they want), she opened up my cabinet and had a look-see as to what we’re feeding Zo. She found, tucked in the back and, to be honest, forgotten, a little tub of Veggie Puffs. Veggie Puffs, in case you’re not the parent of a small child, are small, flower-shaped little puffs of nothing. Easy to dissolve in baby’s mouth, the package says. Hers happen to be sweet potato-flavored, not that you can tell since they resemble Kashi cereal, which M and I have decided is simply extremely light-weight cardboard. Veggie Puffs are for children who are learning to self-feed.

So that night, at dinner, we popped open the Veggie Puffs and put one on Zoe’s tray. She looked at it like we had just put a cat turd in front of her. Since it was the first one, I picked it up and stuck it in her mouth. She liked it, so we put another one down. This time she picked it up and held it out to me. I guided her hand back to her mouth, and then cracked up as she struggled to get it in there, with her mouth as wide open as she could get it.

She finally got it in, and was delighted with herself. It helped that we cheered and clapped. However, then her idea of self-feeding was picking it up and holding it out to me, whereupon I’d push her hand back towards her mouth and she’d stick it in. We did this for pretty much the rest of dinner.

Today, at lunch, she had a few more. After she was finished eating, and I was preparing our meal, I dumped a few on the tray in front of her, mainly just to keep her occupied for a moment so I could get things rolling. I turned around and turned back, and she was chewing away, and there were no Veggie Puffs to be seen. For the first time, she had picked them up and stuck them in her mouth, with no help, or even encouragement, at all.

It’s freaky, this self-feeding thing. And liberating. We were able to eat our dinner without having to stop every minute to give her something, or help her eat it. Granted, she’s not all the way there yet (she uses her spoon more as a drumstick, to make noises by beating things), but it’s a start. Now if we can just get past her distaste for all things sippy cup…