Thursday, December 29, 2005
Speaking of Food…
It’s so cool how Sadie does these discontinuous leaps that at least seem sudden and are usually forced or indicated by her, or at least result in an “it’s about time” reaction.
I bought a $9-something booster seat the week before Christmas, on the idea that we’d bring it to my sister’s, because my mother would forget to bring hers. That and we’d need it soon anyway. She did, predictably, but so did I, almost as predictably. It may not have helped Sadie’s disposition during dinner at my sister’s to be standing in the chair rather than having a place to sit. It certainly encouraged her to keep trying to climb onto the table.
Anyway, after the holiday, we took it down from where it had been and she latched onto it. She carried it around, sat in it in the living room, all excited to have a me-sized chair. I’m tempted to buy another for that purpose.
We strapped it to one of the folding chairs that pass for kitchen seating here, but that only heightened her excitement. She wants to sit in it regularly. As we’d planned, we started feeding her there and sitting with her to eat at the table. The reaction is essentially “yay, I’m a big girl now, what took you so long,” and she is only a fraction as messy as she was in the highchair. She ate chicken salsa fiesta with a shirt on and walked away clean.
At the same time, she’s made a leap toward mastering silverware. She can spoon the milk out of her cereal bowl and get it to her mouth now, with surprisingly modest spillage. She’s also gotten enthused about using a napkin to wipe what she spills and her face. She’s still awkward, but has the right idea and does manage to come out of meals with her face a fraction as slopped as before.
It’s so cool to watch.