Trine picked up a new toy for Molli because it was on sale this morning. It didn’t say anything about recommended ages, so we were wary.
As you can see, Molli was pretty excited about it.
She obviously doesn’t have the motor skills to flip the little wooden beads around the twisting rods, and she has to be watched like a hawk when the toy is within her grasp because she’s just as likely as not to wrap her little fingers around it and smash herself in the face with it.
Or, since it’s not food, to simply try to eat it.
I had a strange day with Molli today because she just wasn’t hungry. Tried and tried to feed her but she wasn’t interested in anything I had to offer. But of course she had to try and eat her new toy.
Trine also thought we could try some baby shortbreads, or whatever the hell they are. She had to leave before we could try one on the girl, but I was dying to see what she’d do with it. I was very nervous because I couldn’t read the instructions… they said something about if your baby can’t “klomper” food yet, you should put it in a bowl with milk to soften it up. That sounded messy and I didn’t know what “klomper” meant (and don’t feel like looking it up right now, though I’ve got some pretty good guesses), so I decided to let her play with it but make damn sure she didn’t actually swallow it. Mainly I was interested to see what she’d do with the damn thing.
So I put her in the Tripp-Trapp chair and set the biscuit in front of her. Her instincts served her well.
There is no photographic evidence of the scene that ensued when I had to take it away from her. Next time it gets softened in milk so she can eat it, because I’m damned if I’m going to go through that again…
Two questions. One: what would have happened if I let her keep gnawing the thing? When I finally did get it away from her I noticed she’d gummed it down quite a bit, and the end she’d been sucking was in fact pretty soft. Are little biscuits like this (it’s designed for babies) a choking hazard? Could she actually jam the whole thing down her throat and hurt herself? One of our friends gives his 8 month old boy a measuring cup to play with, and it has a really long handle. He said it’s the kid’s favorite toy. I asked if he worried about the kid choking on the handle, since it was very narrow (about a centimeter at its widest) and quite long. He said no, a pediatrician had told them the gagging instinct is so strong on kids that objects like that don’t pose a real problem. Now, at the other end of that handle there’s a measuring cup that would never fit in the kids mouth, so extraction wouldn’t be hard if it came to that anyway. No such luck with the biscuits. What do you think? That’s one question.
Here’s the second: when Molli’s on her back or in her little chair with a toy in her hand, she raises and lowers her arm with astonishing power and frequency—to the point that I keep wanting to call her Bam-Bam. She really goes crazy: up and down and up and down, violently, bashing the toy against her thigh on the downswing and, sometimes, her head on the upswing. I’ve actually seen her hurt herself doing this. It seems like pure instinct: put toy in hand, bam! bam! bam! bam! bam! for minutes at a time. Is that normal? If so, how do I stop her from smacking herself silly with her toys? If it’s not normal, Jesus, what the hell is it? Some kind of spastic arm thing? (I should mention that Trine’s very relaxed about it and keeps saying, “She’s a baby, she’s just learning how to use her muscles, of course it’s normal,” but it’s just a weird damn thing to see and I’d be very reassured to hear other people say, “It’s totally normal and that’s why baby toys are soft, dimwit. She’ll be fine as long as you don’t start handing her hammers or staple-guns.)
Moster Mette arrives early tomorrow afternoon… probably takes off in a couple of hours. So I’m sure there’ll be plenty of pictures tomorrow.
With the real experts having weighed in I can only echo their comments. Sounds like you have a very healthy and active baby. Can’t wait to see her in person.
Relax – everything is perfectly normal. Before the invention of whatever little contration Deb described, we fed our babies hard biscuits or cookies and they did just what molli did – gummed them til they were soft and then swallowed them. The amount she can gum and swallow at once isn’t enough for her to choke on. Just watch over her so that as the cookie gets small enough to go in her mouth in one piece you can grab it out of her hand. It’s the same idea as a bagle. When it’s hard, it feels good on her gums and when it’s soft it’s swallowable (word?).
The arm thing is perfectly normal – she doesn’t have control of her muscles yet and she’s learning what she can do. Think of it as experimental. Just keep lethal items out of her hands.
She looks cute enough to eat and she’s so alert! I love her in that colorful sweater! It looks like something I would have made her – in fact, Debbie asked me if I had the first time she saw it.
Have a fun time with Mette and enjoy having the extra pair of hands around. Say hi for me – she’s probably there now.
Love,
Mom
Molli is really looking so much more grown up now that she is sitting up in her little chair. I feel like I totally missed the infant stage and it makes me so sad.
As for the teething biscuit, you have arrived at a topic of much debate for parents of babies Molli’s age.
I know that in the States they actually sell a device that looks like a pacifier except with a piece of mesh where the sucky part should be. You put the teething biscuit in the mesh part and the pacifier part keeps them from choking. Can you visualize it? I bet you could make it easily enough by putting the teething biscuit in some cheese cloth and attaching it to something that she can absolutely not choke on. Am I making any sense? If not you can wait a month til you come stateside and buy one of the little devices.
As for the “bam, bam” movements, all I can say is “listen to your wife!”. She knows of what she speaks.