Snacks

"Mom, what the heck am I supposed to do with this thing?"

Karina has been working on her fine motor skills trying to pick up the tiny pieces of veggie puffs that I've been putting on her tray whenever we're eating. I basically break an already tiny 5 pointed "asterisk" into 5 pieces so she won't choke. I did that for a few days and I fed her some of the little pieces for practice...although most pieces had to be pushed back in a few times. A couple of days ago I started giving her whole puffs and would notice after a few minutes of preparing her oatmeal that they were all gone! I was so excited that she'd fed herself until I realized that she was holding all of the puffs in her fists. Today, however, I turned around in time to see her pick one up and place it in her mouth! She still made that "what the heck is in my mouth?" look, but then played around with it in her mouth...didn't let it slide out...and then swallowed it!

To potentially make it easier to eat...or at least easier to pick up...I bought Karina some Zwieback Toast and Biter Biscuits. As you can see in the pictures above, she's not quite sure what to do with the Toast. She did figure out that you can put it in your mouth and that it has a taste, but it was so crispy that mostly she just scraped off a little bit of toast with her teeth into her lap and made a big mess of crumbs! I guess this is only the beginning of the culinary messes to come, huh?

She did much better with the Biter Biscuits, although something about the eating process must trigger a gag type reflex, because her eyes and nose run terribly while biting on the biscuit! Poor thing! Who remembered that it was this challenging to learn how to eat?