Biter Biscuits and Mother's Day

So, Violet is probably one of the only babies ever to not instinctively put things in her mouth. She's never taken a pacifier, she only tried to suck her thumb like, twice. And she's never put her toys (or anything else) in her mouth to chew on or what-not.

While this sounds like a very good thing, and it is, in some cases...it also means she does not put food in her mouth. When she moves up into the next class at daycare, she has to be able to feed herself somewhat. Well, she doesn't.

We've been working with her on it...with Cheerios and Puffs and the like. She picks them up now, but they're usually just to hold on to. If you try to get her to put it in her mouth, she drops them...just opens her little hand and lets go.

Sidebar: She also does this when trying to get her to hold her own bottle, but that is not the point of this story.

So, I bought some biter biscuits for something for her to chew on a while back when she was teething. The first time I tried one she just played with it, as always. Well, two weeks ago, I whipped another one out hoping maybe, just maybe, she would eat it by herself.

We sat down on the living room floor, and I gave it to her. At first she just looked at it, and played with it...but then I moved her hand to her mouth and helped her and she caught on! She actually ate it by herself! YAY!!!!!

So, of course, I had to document it with the camera. I also took a picture with my phone and e-mailed it to John (who was in OKC for a race) b/c I was just so excited and proud and I wanted to show him the proof!

Here she is eating it!




Check out the mess she made!


After a while of eating it, she started to play with it. "Ooh, it's crumbly in my fingers. This is fun!"


And this one is right before I took her into the bathroom to clean up.


Now, had I actually thought she would eat the biscuit, I may have been a little smarter and done this in her high chair, with a bib on. (The next time I gave her one, that's what I did.) But, since it was an experiment and I didn't completely think it through, we did it in the living room, on the carpet.

By the time she was done actually eating it, I had to fight to keep her from putting her fingers (coated in biscuit) on the carpet or on me...I also had to keep her from leaning too far forward or else her biscuity drool would go on the carpet. That's when I decided biscuit time was over.

She wound up eating probably 1/3 of the whole biscuit, which I thought was really good!

The next day was Mother's day (my first!). John and Violet got me speakers for my iPods/iPhone. I got one speaker for at work and one for at home. Super exciting! We did dinner with my mom on Saturday night, and with John's mom on Sunday late afternoon. We got both of them little wallet sized digital photo displayers that you can upload pics onto and it's small enough to carry in their purses.

It was a great Mother's day weekend!