My kids have never been very big stick-everything-in their-mouth-ers. From the time they start to be mobile we discourage it for the most part and, for the most part, it works. None of my kids have ever tried to eat dirt or lotion or books . Unlike some babies, the number one thing that goes into their mouth is food. With a pacifier coming in second.
Part of the reason for this is that I'm a freak about dirt. Not necessarily just regular dirt, but anything that might be messy or make somebody look dirty. I learned that I was a freak about it when I was at a fast food place with someone who may or may not have been related to me, possibly as a female sibling, or not. One of my nieces was biting into a hamburger and I could see that a big-ol', ketchup covered pickle was about to fall out the end of it onto her shirt. I instinctively called out, "Tyra! Watch out!" or something. This caused my si--this person I'm referring to -- to ask me at what point I became such a freak about dirt/messes. But then, HER boys do stuff like this at the breakfast table. :)
Thus far Aaron has followed in the steps of his siblings. If he gets crumbs or anything sticky on his hands, he holds them out and open kind of waiting for the moment they will be cleaned. If his hands touch the ground outside when he's walking and loses his balance, he brushes them off the best he can and then continues walking on with his hands out and palm up until he forgets that they got dirty (3-4 seconds). I am grateful that he has this awareness.
Unfortunately, however, he has recently veered from his siblings in terms of what goes into his mouth. He rarely EVER put anything in his mouth from maybe 6 months right up until 15 months except for cell phones, which don't count, since people of all ages have a hard time resisting their delicious, electronic zing. This week however, we have seen him snacking on such tasty morsels as rocks, hair clasps (the kind with pokey claws-Mmmm!), Uno cards and balls of various sizes (I started typing "various shapes and sizes", duh; and we don't even own a football). He never actually ingests any of these objects, he just kind of puts them a little way into his mouth and sucks on or licks them a little; just to get some of the goodness off of them.
Rocks are his favorite. We've got PLENTY of rocks in our house. Evie and David used to collect rocks. A few were selected because they were pretty, but most of them were chosen because they were rocks. They use them when they're playing with cars or Polly Pocket or they make designs with them on the floor. There's a strange* thing about stuff that my kids play with. Whenever it comes time to clean things up, always (or usually; maybe sometimes) a few of those toys manage to sneak away to be found, vacuumed up, stepped on or sucked on at a later date. With rocks, lately it's mostly been the later.
We're working to fix this "problem" and already he glances up at us whenever we're around and he's got something half way to his mouth. This is evidence that he is at the first step, Recognizing that You Have a Problem. We'll see how we do from here. I captured an example of this on video. I had Greg crop it (or whatever the term is) for me and then, by the time we transferred it to my computer, it had been completely transformed without my permission. Greg has a hard time abstaining from performing his video magic on stuff. Oh well. At least now you can see at exactly what point Aaron realizes that he really can't suck on that toothpaste (since mom was watching).
And I tried three times to upload the documentation of how Aaron got into this bathroom, but it quit uploading when it was 7/8ths of the way done each time (that's about 4-5 hours of trying--UGH!--why, oh why can't BYU let people watch you tube videos!!! I WILL get it uploaded and post it ASAP.
*I'm sure you're all thinking, "That's NEVER happened at OUR house!"
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