Mouthing Off

This week I misread my Babycentre milestone email  (fantastic email by the way if you’re not already on it) and thought it said that my baby, at 4 months, would now most likely be mouthing off at objects.  Good on you little N, I thought, you tell ‘em.  Excellent practice for later.  Objects  now, kids in the sandpit later on.  Then I realized there was no “off”, and in fact Babycentre was saying at this stage of his development he would be “mouthing objects”; which means, he’ll be putting stuff in his mouth.  Not nearly as interesting as mouthing off, but yes, he certainly is mouthing objects.  With impressive consistency in fact.  It’s really all he does every waking hour.  It’s a bit like this:

New toy, ahhh, fascination…a pause..what to do with it? I’ll put it in my mouth.

Oo, fun stuff happening, I’m so excited I don’t know what to do with myself. I know, put my hands in my mouth.

What’s that? I don’t know, I think I’ll put it in my mouth.

He is still not great at the grasping objects part of this milestone.  It’s mostly just his hands he’s putting in there.  Occasionally it’s a toy.  But at all times, whatever it is, it presents a dilemma that’s particularly entertaining to watch him try and resolve – if he puts his hand or other object in his mouth, he has to GIVE UP THE DUMMY.  He hasn’t entirely accepted this. The consternation on his face as he tries to retain the dummy is always priceless.  He sometimes does manage to keep the dummy on one side,  which ends up looking a bit like a baby version of the Marlboro Man, dummy out the corner of the mouth style.  Except there’s no look of casual confidence because mostly it’s just not achievable to have your hand in your mouth AND the dummy.  So we witness one of life’s first lessons; something is going to have to give tiger, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

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