The PINCERS!

The pincer grasp - an important developmental milestone in the life of a baby. A milestone Henry has reached and completely mastered and surpassed. He is almost TOO good at the pincer grasp. He:

a) can pick up the tiniest ball of lint, chunk of tortilla chip or piece of plastic wrap.
b) finds every single little speck of everything on the floor and puts it in his mouth.
c) must have really good eyesight; he can spot specks of things hidden in the carpet.
d) has a jaw of steel and thinks it's pure funny when I run over and try to pry his mouth open to get something out of it - it's almost as if he does it just for my reaction. Have you ever tried to pry someone's jaw open while they laughed at you?

I like to have fun making his food - we call these his "appetizers" because of the decorative pea attached for extra vitamins. And because he picks them up like they are fancy appetizer delicatessens. 

Butternut squash puree on toast with a pea topper.

Now, he is so good at the pincer grasp that it poses a problem with the appetizers.

He would rather just have the toast (his favorite) with the good stuff on it. 

Forget about the greens.

So he uses this beautiful (right?) pincer grasp to remove the pea from the appetizer.

And we have stray peas, people. 

The toast? Down the hatch.

Still working on getting greens into this boy. He warmed back up to avocados today, so that was exciting. He also pinced a thumbtack off of the bulletin board in our lobby yesterday when I was getting the mail out of our box. Like ninja-style fast. I was relieved I looked up in time to see the thumbtack go into his mouth so I could pull it out before he clamped down his jaw of steel.


This cracked me up today: 
"Right now, you'll notice your little guy exploring objects by bumping, banging, shaking, squeezing, tasting, and throwing them. Annoying? Sure. But think about this: When you look at a sponge, you don't need to touch it; you know how it feels. How do you know it? Because when you were a baby you likely had many opportunities to pick up sponges and explore their properties. All the touching, tasting, and exploring your child is doing right now provide him with lifelong knowledge about various objects within his reach. So while you might find some of these activities irritating (so long, favorite picture frame!), be patient. Your baby is learning valuable lessons about the properties of objects."

I wonder if I learned about the properties of thumbtacks by trying to eat one.

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