Looks like the self-feeding is paying off.  Although Gavin hasn’t quite mastered the art of putting the spoon into his mouth to feed, he has discovered that licking his fingers after playing with his food can be quite rewarding.  It also appears he likes what he tastes from his fingers because yesterday morning he willingly ate rice cereal from the spoon.  He took about four mouthfuls before he rejected the rest.  Respectfully, I abided by his wishes and did not attempt to offer him the spoon again.

For the rest of the day, he ate carrot and wholemeal bread which I fed to him in little pieces, while gnawing at his teething biscuits in between.  I’m not too happy with the Holle teething biscuits because I think they break too easily.  Gavin has developed a rather greedy habit of stuffing a large portion of the biscuit into his mouth and gnawing at the center until it breaks in half, leaving him with a mouthful he can’t cope with.  He has already choked a couple of times.  I’m thinking of switching him to Heinz Teething Rusks which I hope will be easier for him to gnaw than Bellamy’s but won’t break as easily as Holle’s.

While we’re on the topic of baby products, I thought I should also add that the Munchkin stay-put bowl that we bought from Singapore isn’t very “stay-put”.  Gavin peels it off so easily we end up having to take it away from him.  Ironically, the divided stay-put bowl we bought from Toys ‘R’ Us for S$5.95 - a fraction of the price of the Munchkin bowl -(shown in the picture below) seems to stick a lot better!  So far Gavin hasn’t succeeded in pulling it off the tray, although he has tried a couple of times.  Ah well, that’s what you get for shopping on the spur of the moment…

But I digress… Gavin’s feeding progress didn’t end with the four mouthfuls of rice cereal.  Last night, after licking a piece of mango from his Ah Kong’s fork, he willingly took several mouthfuls of mango for dessert.  Ah Kong commented that Gavin is a smart boy because he only eats the expensive mangoes.  Indeed, the mangoes were imported R2E2 variants from Australia costing RM16 a pop.  Looks like we have a little mango connoisseur on our hands.

This morning when I tried feeding Gavin rice cereal from the spoon again but he didn’t want it, so I dished it out into his bowl and let him play with it.  During dinner time, I tried again and this time he ate half of what I prepared from the spoon and licked the rest of his fingers!  I guess there’s a lot to be said about respecting baby’s wishes and not trying to force baby to eat, or eat through the methods we Mums deem fit for a baby.

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