Nadia loves to eat paper products. Over the last couple of months she's been seen putting paper, Kleenex, toilet paper, napkins, etc. in her mouth. I used to let her play with the junk mail as she'd have fun crumpling and tearing it, but I can't give it to her any more as doing so means fishing little pieces of paper out of her mouth. Same goes for cardboard boxes. I used to let her play with small empty boxes (such as for granola bars or cereal), but now she bites or rips little pieces off and tries to eat them. Yesterday my friend dropped off her slide, which he had picked up for me on Wednesday at Walmart. I thought she'd have fun playing inside the box as it was several times bigger than her. I put a few toys inside and encouraged her to play in it. She went in, but she was only interested in eating the box not playing in it. At one point I saw her just licking the cardboard, and other times she was again tearing or biting off little pieces. So the box went out in the garage before it became her lunch.
The saddest moment in terms of her eating cardboard is that in the past week she's damaged two of her board books by biting a chunk out of them. :-( I thought board books were safe for babies to "eat." I guess not! I also think I must be underestimating the strength of her 4 teeth. Yesterday when I was serving her some ham & swiss cheese quiche I had made, I picked out the pieces of ham thinking she couldn't chew them. I think she could! So now I am trying to work with her on not eating books. She owns 4 bath books so I have been handing her one of those if she really seems to want to chew on a book. Hopefully she can learn not to put the books in her mouth, but it's going to be hard as she wants to put EVERYTHING in her mouth. I think part of the problem is that she's teething.There are a few sippy cups that she can drink a couple of ounces from - Nuby, Nuk, and Munchkin brands (Gerber ones and the ones with a straw don't work for her at all). The ones that work for her have a REALLY soft spout, but she still does NOT like it. She'll drink a little when she's really hungry, but then she just cries. I think I'm going to have to just pack the bottles away and just deal with more crying than usual for a day or two as it's not that she can't drink from some of the sippy cups - she just prefers her bottle. I think cold turkey will probably be the way to go. That's what worked when I weaned her off the nipple thing I was using when I was nursing her at first. I know she's supposed to be off the bottle by 12 months old, and that's only 12 days from now so I'd better get her transitioned to a sippy cup soon!
Yesterday afternoon Paul's parents (and our nephew Shawn) came up to watch Nadia while I was at work so Paul could stay at PSU and get some work done. Shawn (age 13) assembled Nadia's new climber/slide. Earlier in the day when I was feeding her in her high chair, I told Nadia that Grandma and Pop Pop were coming to play with her today. She put down the toy that she had been playing with and started looking around the room even craning to see if maybe they were behind her high chair. It was so cute! Of course she doesn't understand the concept of "later" yet.
Tonight we plan to go to the fire company carnival that we went to last week. This week it's being held in our town. I think she should ride the carousel with Daddy tonight. Hopefully the weather will cooperate! :-)
4 comments:
My kids both went through a cardboard/paper eating phase too. We also have a few board books with chunks bitten out of them, despite our best efforts to prevent their being treated that way. I agree that giving her a bath book to chew on is a good solution... or sit her on your lap to read her the board book (which I'm sure you're already doing)... but letting her handle them on her own without close supervision may result in more fiber in her diet, LOL. I have a friend who claims that she discovered a corner of a magazine page in her child's diaper... with the print still legible!! Ick. This stage will eventually pass, but unfortunately probably not for several months.
Regarding the bottle-- don't feel too much pressure to wean her from it by the time she reaches her birthday. There are plenty of toddlers out there who still drink the occasional bottle or are still nursing. For example, I have a friend who kept giving a warm bottle of milk at bedtime up until almost age 2... and her kid turned out perfectly normal. :) And I nursed my kids that long too. Adam actually needed help using a sippy cup until he was about 15 to 18 months old, if I recall correctly... but he's quite an independent eater & drinker now! Well anyway, I'm not trying to discourage you from teaching Nadia to use a sippy cup, but just trying to encourage you that it's okay if the transition from bottle to sippy cup takes longer than the "1st birthday" benchmark.
All of the board books we got Henry during the first sixteen months of his life have tons of teeth marks, as well as missing chunks. One day two or three years from now you'll pull one of them off the bookshelf and find yourself getting all mushy over them. Course, that could just be me... :)
oooh... I did not understand that you were trying to wean her from the bottle. It pretty much took me all teh second year to wean my kids... I started with the one in the morning, then we got rid of teh afternoon bottle and finally we replaced the evening one. I was worried especially about Jaco because he was not a good eater so I wanted to make sure he got some calories from the milk. If you don't have this worry, go for it - I am sure she will switch well. As for drinking water, I think that if she drinks 2 oz from the cup she is actually doing great. Most kids do not drink a whole lot (although it would be good if they did). I actually have a story about this: the son of one of my friend was drinking way more than Jaco and Sofia and I was so jealous about it... it turned out that he had type I diabetes and that was the reason why he was drinking so much.
yeah Jaxon loves to eat any type paper-- she is sooo cute in those pics!
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