Myron is still quite skilled at eating finger foods. The nice thing about finger foods is that cleanup is usually as easy as picking up the solid pieces from inside his chair and feeding them to him as fun bonus snacks and then picking up more solid pieces from the floor and putting them in the compost. With liquid or quasi-liquid foods, of course, they gravitate toward their natural state of smeared messes. Usually we keep the bowl out of reach and spoon feed him ourselves in order to avoid an extended cleanup. I know some have the philosophy of just resigning to a state of messes, but I have a hard time with that. However, I realize at some point, Myron should learn to use utensils on his own, so now that he is starting to use tools like toothbrushes, we have been practicing sometimes with his chunky, rubbery training spoons. I stand by with towels ready and stick his suction cup bowl onto the counter and try to wipe things up before they spread. If there is a drop of food on the table, he will try to grab it. Then when he has food on his hands, before long, it ends up on the chair, in his clothes, on his face, and in his hair. Sometimes he sticks his hand in the bowl. He usually expects us to do the spoon work for him since of course that is what we usually do. But sometimes, with encouragement, he uses the spoon. Early attempts involved him tapping the spoon on the side of the bowl or grabbing the food end of the spoon and putting the handle end in his mouth. But a couple of times, he got it right!

For Christmas, Grandma Nancy had given us a gift certificate for the diner down the street from our house, so the three of us went there for breakfast one Sunday morning. We had been with Myron once before, but that time he was not quite as aware of what was going on or where he was. This time, he knew he was in a place where everyone was eating, and of course, he wanted to eat everything, including the silverware. As our food came, we had to quickly move it out of reach before Myron could flip the whole plate into himself and the floor. The server was strategic in where she placed the dishes, but it was a small table, so it was still a bit of a puzzle. Em ordered grits that were intended for either me or Myron. Myron ate the entire bowl in record time. He also ate a not-small portion of hash browns and some other things I don’t remember, partly because they disappeared so quickly. There was a small pile on the floor in front of his high chair, and I wiped it up before we left.

Speaking of Grandma Nancy, she is visiting (pictured here with the adorable fabric book she made for him). Dziadziu (grandpa) is on his way to join us as I write this.

Myron tried some pancakes but seemed to be a little confused by the texture. Most foods he is used to fall into one of two extremes: the liquid ones that either slide right down his gullet or dissolve in his mouth (e.g. rice crackers) and then the very tough ones like bagels that he can teethe on for a while and partly dissolve. I think pancakes were an unfamiliar middle ground.

Myron is enjoying playing with this ball set from Grandma Sue lately. He was able to drop one and roll it across the counter to me, so we played catch for a bit! I wasn’t expecting to be able to do that for a while.
Also pictured here (the blue spatula-type thing) is a tool Em bought me – it is intended to be an applicator for diaper cream. She bought me this because I refuse to apply diaper cream with my fingers. While diaper cream-covered fingertips are a bummer (the stuff is surprisingly viscous and hard to remove), a tool permanently covered in diaper cream and associated particles seemed like an even more significant bummer to me, so I never used it, and it turned into a toy for Myron. It has a suction cup on the bottom, which makes it fun for him to pull off the counter. As for applying diaper cream, my method is to squeeze it directly onto the butt and wipe it on with the clean diaper. This works pretty well.

Also, he has started to figure out how to use his hair brush! Em often brushes his hair with it in the morning. And sometimes I will brush his hair a couple of times just to remind him what it’s intended for and then give it to him to play with while I change his diaper. Usually he puts it in his mouth as shown or he rubs the bristles with his fingers, but recently, he has been patting his head with it!

Watching him learn all these new skills is very fun.