Adventures in Self-Feeding

A few days ago, we purchased a pack of Lil' Dippers. Made to fit little hands just perfectly, they are supposed to make it easier for Aidan to learn to feed himself. Before the Lil' Dipper, Aidan would try to pull the infant spoon out of our hands and feed himself. Those infant spoons are too long and thin, which made it easy for gagging, and the handles are either hard metal or hard plastic, not good for a teething baby at all. The Lil' Dipper has a nice rubbery handle that Aidan can chew on in between bites. It is also short with a guard around the "spoon" part to prevent gagging.

So far Aidan has been doing pretty well with it. He hasn't gotten the dipping part down yet, but he does pretty well with the feeding part. I dip it in the food and hand it to Aidan to feed himself. Sometimes he doesn't have perfect aim, which can make the meal a little messy. But, practice makes perfect! And he seems to really enjoy participating in the feeding process.

Here's the story in photos:

And, if you happened to notice that the Lil' Dipper in the very last picture has a different colored handle... Well, that's because Sir Aidan thought it would be fun to throw his Lil' Dipper at Noah!!! Of course, Noah was happy about that as he got to lick the remnants of corn and squash off of the Lil' Dipper. Now that Aidan has gotten into the "throwing food at Noah" stage, Noah is always a constant companion when Aidan is in his highchair!