One feature of working full time away from a quickly-developing baby is that we don’t always know when she’s on to the “next” stage of something. Like how one day, we had to bottlefeed her at home in our care (normally I nurse every meal when I’m not at work) and Mr. W realizes that Allie was holding her bottle on her own. Apparently this was nothing new to Jayne, but because Jayne’s with Allie daily for more hours than we are, she isn’t always aware that something that isn’t new to her is new to us.

Last week, we discovered that Allie is able to feed herself and this weekend, suddenly she’s able to use the sippy cup. The feeding herself came with a little practice. First, she was quickly putting little specks of random stuff she finds on the floor or furniture into her mouth before an adult could stop her. (Lint, mostly, sometimes scraps of paper or napkin she’d torn, and we’re usually able to stop her or at least catch her early enough to snap, “No!” and make her freeze.) Then, Mr. W tried feeding her some organic baby puffs. She would open her mouth and take it, and he’d hand it to her and she’d finger it, unsure of whether we’d actually allow her to put something into her mouth for once. When we guided her hand toward her mouth, she’d hesitantly look at us in confusion, then open her mouth just a tiny bit, and do a dainty test bite with her front teeth. Now she knows anything we put in front of her while she’s still in her high chair after a meal, shelled peas or puffs, are fair game. She feeds herself these fingerfoods with confidence.
The sippy cup was a little bit of a revelation. In our initial introduction of the sippy cup, Allie would bite at the extended mouthpiece, unsure of what to do with it. If you’d tried to describe the instruction for “suck” to an infant, you’ll know it’s pretty much a lost cause, so we’d put the sippy cup lid away, but did feed her water with the cup portion of the sippy cup with her solid meals so she’d be familiar with the cup and the water. When we were at a restaurant feeding her her purees, we’d do the same with a glass of water. We started with a straw, plugging up the top with our thumbs and bringing the bottom of the straw to her mouth, feeding her like a little birdie. She soon learned to suck the water out the bottom of the straw and not just leave it to gravity. Then, last week, we tried leaving the straw in the cup and letting her sip from the top. That didn’t work before, but after being “trained” to suck the straw from the bottom for a few weeks, the top was a small change and she did it. We thought, “This is great! Now we can skip the sippy cup altogether.” Then my cousin Jennifer told us that her daycare won’t let her 11-month-old graduate to the next class unless her kid could use a sippy cup. Darn it, back to the drawing board. So yesterday, we tried the sippy cup with the suction lid again. Allie suddenly took to it with no problem. I guess the trick was converting her from the top of the straw to the top of the sippy cup lid, because that’s a gradual change from what she already knows to do. So today, when my parents came to visit, they got to enjoy Allie’s new skills and they took this little 42-second video (among 23 other videos):


BTW, while I was downloading the video from my mom’s camera into our PC, I found this never-before-seen photo.

WHAT the…?! I’ve never seen my little baby look like that!
Allie: “Whatever doesn’t kill me…had BETTER START RUNNING!!”