Miss Independent

I like to (jokingly) ask Baby B when she's going to start pitching in around here: "When are you going to start making your own bottles?" "When are you going to get a job and pay for your own diapers?" "When are you going to drive yourself home from daycare?" Obviously the humor in all of it is that it's so ridiculous to expect such things from an itty-bitty baby.

But, she's on the verge of being able to feed herself, so we got her some Gerber Puffs to test out, since she can practice her pincer grip and chewing, but the Puffs melt in her mouth, so they dissolve if she can't quite figure it out. We started giving them to her a few days ago, and already she's made a big improvement. Her grip, while clumsy at times, is right on at other times. If she has the Puff between her thumb and forefinger, she can get it in her mouth pretty easily. However she's hilarious when she gets it in the middle of her hand and puts her whole hand in her mouth trying to get the Puff--yet somehow the Puff stays outside her mouth. Once she gets it in her mouth, she usually does attempt to chew it, so that makes me feel a little better about introducing real table food at some point (we're still undecided when we're going to do that, but probably when we introduce meat after going through the major fruits and veggies).

Who is this child who's starting to feed herself and who is crawling all over my house trying to explore every nook and cranny?