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I'm in denial. I still think of Carmine as a baby, but there is less and less baby there with every passing day.

He's mister "I can do it myself" with just about everything - but particularly about eating. He gets mad when we cut stuff up for him. If he doesn't see us cut it up, it's ok. I can put a plate of diced-up food in front of him and he doesn't complain. But if I put a half a piece of toast on his plate, and cut it up into smaller pieces while he's watching, he totally freaks out.

This, of course, results in him shoving massive quantities of food in his mouth at once, which is both disgusting and dangerous. So I try to cut his food up on the sly.

He's gotten good using a spoon, too, and can very succesfully eat a container of yogurt and a bowl of cereal. It's not pretty, and there's some major cleanup afterwards, but he gets it done!

His eating habits, aside from being messy, are also annoyingly picky. His diet consists of cheese, bread, fruit, yogurt, crackers, and cereal bars. I remember Gabe being exactly like this at this age, and it drove me crazy then, too.

It's not that I'm worried about him getting enough nutrition - anyone who's seen pictures of his round little belly and his enormous thighs knows that he's getting PLENTY to eat. It's just annoying, because when we give him something he doesn't want to eat, he often makes a huge fuss about it - whining and/or throwing the offending food.

He's gotten better about the throwing, and that doesn't happen nearly as often anymore. But it'll be much nicer when he eats more of the stuff we eat - and I know he will. Gabe is now just as adventurous an eater as Dante, so I know Carmine will get there, too.

Our little man has also now mastered the slide at the playground - he can get up and down all by himself. And since his big brothers were nice enough to demonstrate for him, when he gets to the bottom of the slide, he turns right around and crawls back up, rather than going around and up the stairs.

Today we took a trip to the Dinosaur Place in CT, and our little boy who screams bloody murder every time we give him a bath or shower, or try to take him in the ocean, spent a full hour getting completely soaked in the splashpad, and loving every minute of it! 

It was so fun to see him laughing and screaming and giggling as he ran in and out of the water. What a difference from last year, when he was 6 months old, and I walked around holding him the entire time. It's pretty awesome having him join in on the fun with us now : )

As we drove down there today, Gabe was talking about how he went there on a field trip when he was in Kindergarten, and how Dante would probably go there this year, too. And a few minutes after that conversation, Gabe commented, with a very wistful tone in his voice "I remember everything I did in Kindergarten. Those were some good times."

Comments

[Wes]

my family is still picky eaters, although I'm the one who throws a fit when they cut up my food ;-)