The Baby That Ate Manhattan (Not to Be Confused with The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh)

The most dangerous place in the world just might be between Sage and a saltine cracker.

And this is before the kid has teeth. Gold help us when she does.

While I might normally be a bit more curious as to why my ten-month old is a bit slow going dental, I have a suspicion that the delay is actually a blessing.

Thalia takes after her mama in the not eating too many things department. Pasta? Check. Cereal? Check. I looking forward to summer so we can add fat peas to the list, thereby increasing it by 50%. Sage on the other hand is our little gluttonous foodie monster. Just like daddy. I can’t think of one food she’s ever flat-out rejected or spit out or flung at the dog.

But ah, if it were only food she’s yearning to wrap her sweet lips around. I’ve had way too many panicked moments reaching into her mouth to fish out coins, hair clips, stickers (ugh, those stickers!), scraps of paper, mealy dog kibble, fuzz from the rug. I expect that if we x-rayed her belly it would be like the cartoon imagery of a whale’s innards – some fish bones, an anchor, some old tires, a tin can. Maybe a trio of Russian sailors missing since October.

Each time I am sure that we have thoroughly cleaned the floor and put all choking hazard-sized items out of reach, Sage manages to find that one wayward penny. That one errant morsel of Iams. That one Dora sticker that lost its adhesive powers and slipped quietly slipped out of the sticker book and onto the floor. And never the big Dora either; it’s always the backpack or the map, something small and virtually undetectable. Until I hear that scary gagging sound and shove my fingers into the back of Sage’s throat to retrieve it.

I’m laughing. But only to mask my absolute terror about it.

I don’t want Sage to grow up to fast. She’s baby # Last and I’m enjoying her every day just as she is. But let me tell you, I am desperately counting down the days until she just gnaws on furniture and the dog food like normal babies do.

{21 Comments}

21 thoughts on “The Baby That Ate Manhattan (Not to Be Confused with The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh)”

  1. Ack! Dora stickers to hell! They grow up so fast, and we want them to hurry up and get to a safer stage, at the same time wanting them to slow down so we can enjoy it. Sigh. The never ending conundrum, I’d say.

  2. The dreaded hair clips. The dog food I can handle b/c my dear baby can chew just about everything up into indeterminable goop. Also, I had a niece who only ate dog food for a week (out of the dog bowl, no this was NOT encouraged), and her pediatrician told my sister that nutritionally it’s okay. Gross, but okay.But the hair clips make me lose my shit b/c it’s always my 4YO who does-and then redoes- her own hair who leaves them around. I’m threatening to shave her head this summer.

  3. I love that Monty Python scene. In fact I think I saw it with you for the first time.Sage may yet get picky like her mommy and sister… but for now, savor the glutton…

  4. My #1 was a picky eater too, but he put the world in his mouth (and no paci would do). But #2… he’ll eat anything. At Sage’s age he focused mostly on shoes. I even tried to substitute other leather items that might be cleaner (you know, like rawhide), but it didn’t work. We just had to LOCK UP our shoes. Once he started on food he just never stopped. He’s tried every food he’s ever encountered. Raw onion? “Did you like that?” “Um… (takes second taste)…no.” Baking soda “I no like” (but didn’t spit it out). He’s had kimchee (spicy city!) and you name it. I’m pretty picky even as an adult so if I come across something I don’t like I just offer it to him and it makes me look like such a self-sacrificing mom! “Here sweetie, you can have all of Mama’s mushrooms!”

  5. I’ve got the same model at home when it comes to the strange objects I fish out of her mouth. Remember that Jaws game where you had to hook the stuff out of Jaws before his mouth snapped shut? Yah, that’s my kid and apparently yours.

  6. I think my Anna will be like Sage. She’s *almost* five months old, and last night, she grabbed an orange slice off of my plate and stuck it in her mouth and sucked madly. The facial expression was priceless. Not one, not two, but three “omg-that’s sour” faces within a few seconds. She took it out, looked at it, and put it back in.

  7. Oscar’s the same way. I swear, he crawls around on the floor looking for things to choke on. Every time I turn around he’s carefully placing something in his mouth and giving me a heart attack.

  8. This made me howl (as so many of your posts do). I have twin nearly-5-year-old daughters and sure enough, the one who put EVERYTHING in her mouth as an infant (gravel, wood chips, socks), but was take-it-or-leave-it about the binky? She will try almost any food and loves salmon, broccoli, tunafish, etc. The one who thought the sun rose and set on the binky, and wept for days when it ‘got lost?’ She eats eat about 4 foods total, 3 of which are starch in some form. I should have let her eat more gravel.

  9. It does pass (says the mother of a former paper, crumb, fuzz, and princess sticker eater). Now he just taunts me with his sister’s TEENY TINY legoes.It’s become all about scaring the shit out of mommy while he laughs heartily.

  10. Ah, yes.The one advantage of having a child who is a picky eater is that such children rarely become obsessed with putting strange objects in their mouths. (I imagine that if they don’t even find food appetizing half the time, pennies from the floor just don’t seem that tasty-looking.)

  11. My 15 month-old is a chipmunk. She stores mountains of food in her mouth and just keeps stuffing. I have to go in and do serious removal. The stickers! So true. funny. and scary.

  12. They’re exactly like my two! The first was all-teething-all-the-time, and now my 9 month old only has the two. Still this does not stop her, she chows down EVERYTHING. And I know that it is safe to assume that she always has something in her mouth that is not supposed to be there. My two year old likes to collect rocks too so that’s fun.

  13. I recently babysat my best friend’s kids and was constantly fishing things out of those damn kid’s mouths…only after they started to sound like they were going to hack up a fur ball.(Ya, I’m not the greatest, most observant babysitter.)None of my kids put anything in their mouths but their fingers, their food or the odd piece of poo.I don’t know how you do it. Hats off to you, friend.

  14. I can vacuum the floor, going over everything twice, and Mira will still find something. Or she’s wiggle her little fingers into the carpet fibers, scratching at it to produce more fuzz to eat. May we all survive to see them turn one year old.

  15. Ours didn’t get her first tooth until 9.5 months, and her next at 10.5 months. After that, she busted out 6 over 4 weeks and caught up, but not until I’d asked the doctor if she might have some recessive Iowa-relative hilbilly gene for no teeth. (Not the case.)And when I used to work at Sick Kids Hospital here in TO, they had this horrifying display of s small, representative sample of things they have removed from children stomachs, including plenty of coins, nails and screws, OPEN diaper pins (the big old-fashioned ones, too), and lot sof other things. Scary. My sister was a mouther, too, and ate medication on a couple of different occasions, while my friend’s brother ate so many varied things (including perfume) that poison control knew the family. So hey, it can’t be all bad.

Comments are closed.