Eli: Cheerio wasteland

Just when I was so impressed at how quickly Eli picked up (literally) Cheerios, I was wondering why he was fussing today when he got his usual Cheerio appetizer (read: stall tactic by Mommy so I have time to heat up his lunch). While waiting for the sweet potatoes to cool, I watched him a little more closely.

Eli does indeed pick the Cheerios up very well. He does that "raking" motion and the Cheerio ends up in his palm. But with his fist formed around the Cheerio, he can't get the Cheerio actually in his mouth to eat. It's both sad and humorous to see him making motions with his mouth and then realizing that no Cheerio made it in. Sometimes he's trying to stuff a Cheerio in his mouth and when I peek in his hand, he actually has 2 or 3 stuck to other parts of his hand that never made it in either. The whole scene used to be more humorous until now when he starts yelping in frustration. Since he's second child (i.e., the 2nd time for me to go through this), I usually have less patience but alas, I did today and tried to teach him to pick it up with his fingers. Eh, didn't quite work. Even in a few short days, he's still used to grabbing and hiding the food in his hand.

And thus, there are 10 mushy-now-hardened Cheerios on the splat mat with another 5-10 in his chair. And since the little suckers stick to everything when wet, we find a random wet Cheerio here and there like in our master bedroom or on his onesie which I almost mistook for a wayward blip of poopy.

Random sidenote since I mentioned sweet potatoes: I bought this "white" sweet potato at Whole Foods just to try for Eli. I love them! They mash and puree so nicely and aren't stringy like the yam I first tried Eli on. They were almost as smooth as the frozen squash puree I bought. Bye bye yams, hello "real" sweet potatoes!