Leilani has recently been fascinated with grabbing lots of things, some more annoying than others. First it was eye-glasses and sunglasses, but I put a stop to that and she really seems to understand. Next it was pens, she loves pens, which is OK as long as we make sure they are not open and not too sharp. But above all, Leilani loves paper. She will grab it really quickly and crumple it and then start pulling, tearing, biting and eating it if we let her.
In a way this is really cute, and since a little ink isn’t too toxic, it’s not that big a problem … until she grabs a shopping list or a check. This leads to one of those parenting gray areas: do we let her do it, which implicitly encourages her, or forbid it completely like the glasses? Because she really enjoys it, we’ve taken the middle road: we try to “approve” every piece she grabs, and either let her have it or take it away (and substitute some other toy to avoid crying).
So I was at the grocery store today, and I was getting some cans off the bottom shelf when I hear Leilani crumpling paper. “Uh oh,” I think, “I must’ve left the shopping list near her.” So I get up quickly and I see her eating coupons. It took me a while to find out where she got them:
Fortunately, I had the digital camera, and it has a movie mode. I was laughing so hard, I let her pull out a half-dozen more coupons. I used to think those stupid coupon dispensers were useless, but now I know they provide baby entertainment. I think we’ll take Leilani back to play with them again.