Day 408 - Wetensils, Youtensils

When you observe your kids, you tend to think to yourself, "When are they going to stop doing this and start to do that?" For instance, when are they going to stop crawling and start walking? Or when are they going to stop babbling and start talking. Or when are they going to stop peeing on Lisa's side of the bed and start peeing in their diaper (I added that because for some strange reason I've been accidentally peeing on Lisa's side of the bed and trying to lay blame on the kids.)?

You can also add to this list of questions, "When are they going to stop using their hands to eat and start to use utensils?" Lisa and I have been trying to get the kids used to using a spoon when we feed them soft foods like mush, yogurt, apple sauce, Velveeta cheese. It usually ends up with food all over them, the floor, and us. When I'm at home by myself, I've occasionally given them bowls of dried foods to let them practice with a spoon without the mess. But inevitably the kids end up using their hands because it's too difficult to use a spoon to pick up Cheerios, crackers, and honey baked hams.

This past weekend, Lisa let the kids use a spoon with a bowl of yogurt and it was pretty successful! The main thing is that you just got to supervise the kids to make sure they're doing everything correctly. Are they holding the spoon on the handle? Is the right end of the spoon going into the bowl? Are they putting the food into their mouth or their ear?

Here are a couple of pictures:



Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to let them feed themselves when I'm at home alone. I've tried it twice and it was quite disastrous. While I was supervising one kid, the other kid was making a mess. While cleaning up the mess, the other kid would make another mess. Then I tried to just feed one kid at a time, but the other kid would get pissed off because they weren't being fed. So I tried dumping Cheerios on their tray to keep them occupied, but they ended up throwing it all on the floor which with the spilled yogurt made the rug look like a delicious granola parfait.

I figure there's no big rush to have the kids learn how to use spoons. They're only 13 months old, and we can have them practice with spoons when Lisa is around to help me. In the meantime, I think I'll just have them practice using steak knives with their tofu pieces. After all, this should be much more safe since you never use knives to put food into your mouth. Take that Supernanny!