Cheerios

A little over a month and a half ago, Granny introduced Caleb to Cheerios. Since keeping him content and out of trouble while Dave and I eat is becoming a challenge, she suggested I put him in the booster seat and give him a few pieces of cereal to munch. It's worked like a charm!

At first Caleb wasn't quite sure what to do with such a small item. He looked it over carefully not even daring to put it in his mouth. When I popped the first little O in his mouth, he made a strange face as his toothless gums tried to chomp it.

Once he figured out he was supposed to eat them, Caleb didn't hold back. The video below shows his excitement one night at dinner as he tries to get Dave to give him more O's. (If you notice him waving at one point, I think this is a baby sign he made up for "more" or "I want" because we've seen it show up on several other occasions.)

Even after Caleb learned Cheerios are to be eaten, he still couldn't quite figure out how to get those little sausage fingers to work together to move the snack into his mouth. I watched as the Cheerios slipped down his palm out of his tongue's reach, often tumbling to his lap or booster seat and sometimes getting stuck to the back of his finger. This may have worked better if I hadn't been too scared to let him have more than one at a time, but I could imagine a handful of cereal being stuffed into those chunky cheeks with no teeth to crunch them all. Dave took pity on the poor boy and practiced with him until Caleb finally had it!

While they say people don't develop a preference for using one
hand over the other until their two years old, I've noticed that
Caleb definitely uses his left hand to eat most of the time. When he
uses his right hand, he seems to have more trouble getting the food in
his mouth and sometimes I see him switch it into the left.

Now instead of chasing Caleb around the floor or trying to hold him on our laps as he grasps for our supper, he can sit in his seat and entertain both himself and us as he steadily works to move the little Cheerio to his mouth with those chunky hands I love so much! With a couple teeth now, he is a master Cheerio chomper.