Teeth and Food and Stuff

by Elisabeth Fairchild

Avocado face. Booya!

Dear Fiona,

I wrote this a few weeks ago and didn’t publish it:

Finally! You have decided to do a few quintessiential baby things that until recently you weren’t down with. For one, you actually like to put things in your mouth all of a sudden. For the longest time, anything but your fingers in there made you wrinkle up your face in disdain. It started with your beloved spoon. For nearly a month now, we have been giving you a pliable silicone baby spoon to play with while we eat, in preparation for your own eating extravaganza yet to come. That spoon made you happy from the word “go.” About a week ago though you decide to take it into the trusting circle of your drool mouth. First, you poked your cheek, then your eye and a few more places on your face, but once the spoon got in your mouth, you never missed again. Now you sit and intently gnaw on it whenever it is made available. You also chew on your other toys, pieces of your clothing, pieces of my clothing, Norman the Zebra, the corners of books, purse straps, teething beads and anything else within reach. This morning I looked in your little mouth and definitively saw a small mound on the lower right. It won’t be long now for tooth number 1!

Reading back, its amazing to me how much you have changed since then. For one thing, it now seems as though the perpetual object -in-mouth thing has been happening forever. The first thing you do with anything you grab is go for your mouth, but your fingers do still seem to be your favorite teething object. Speaking of teething… you have cut both of your bottom teeth. They aren’t in really, they are just barely raised above the gums. The first one- the lower right- seemed to be no biggy for you to cut through. The lower left definitely kept you up last night, which I am assuming is when it broke through. I have to say, even though it really doesn’t have anything to do with you consciously, I feel really proud about your teeth. Its amazing how sharp they are but they are also just so little (especially since they haven’t come all the way out) and really darn cute.

Coinciding with your newly acquire teeth, we have started you on solids. We decided to go for avocado first. From the very first bite you loved it. What surprised me most about feeding you was how unsurprised you were about it. It seemed natural to you and you only wrinkled up your face the second time we fed you, when the consistency was perhaps a little too thick. What you like to do is take the spoon, get most of the food in your mouth and then stick your fingers in to help you swallow. When I get the spoon close to your mouth you use your fingers to sweep food off of the spoon and into your mouth. You grab the spoon sometimes and fairly accurately lick the food off it. Of course it gets everywhere but that is part of the fun!  Today you ate almost a third of an avocado. WOW. If there is one thing this all tells me, its that you are so ready to eat. Next we are going for sweet potato. Your poop was already green but looks like its about to go orange!