When all else fails, shovel it

The other day, we gave Baby B some cut-up pieces of banana as her first real finger food, just to try it out and see how she did. She's got a real good pincer grasp, but since her fingers get wet from putting them in her mouth and because the bananas are slippery to start with, she sometimes has trouble picking it up. (Yes, I know about the trick of rolling the pieces in ground-up Cheerios or graham crackers, but we had neither at the time.) Rather quickly, Baby B figured out on her own that all she had to do was get her face down near her tray and push the piece of banana directly into her mouth without needing to pick it up. The Husband and I looked at each other in amazement as she did this not just once (which could have been a fluke), but two or three times in a row.

Is she very advanced, or what? ;)

We also recently gave her one of those mesh infant teething feeders, in which you put baby-appropriate foods (we used banana first and did papaya next) and they can eat them without fear of choking on big pieces. That went over very well, even though it is a pain in the rump to clean well.