I don’t know if this one is ever mentioned in the baby books, but tonight, Leilani managed to feed herself from my plate.
We’ve mentioned before how interested she is in our food when she sits on our laps during meals. She will grab plates and silverware or anything she can reach on the table. She obviously can tell we are eating, especially now that we feed her 2 to 3 meals per day from her own bowl with a spoon. She also likes to grab food and squish it in her hands whenever we’re not paying enough attention.
Today, my wife went shopping with Leilani and bought herself an ice cream bar (since she made her diet public, I can say that here :-). Apparently, Leilani kept reaching for it and trying to grab it, and Mommy had a hard time holding her and eating the ice cream. We knew it was coming, but it’s finally here: one side effect of having a child is that we have to eat more healthy if we want her to eat well.
But until tonight, Leilani had never grabbed food and put it in her mouth to eat it. She was sitting on my lap and reached for my plate as usual. Since I had white rice facing her, I figured it would be easy enough to clean up if she played with it, and it would be safe for her to swallow if she got some in her mouth. But instead of playing with it or squishing it, she consciously picked up a clump, mostly with her fingers instead of her palm, quicly moved it to her mouth and ate it, even licking her fingers to get more grains of the sticky rice. She repeated it a few more times and seemed to like eating rice, until she got bored and just spread it all over.