Oh, we aren't talking about the Baby Mum-Mums or the Gerber Puffs. We aren't talking about the Wagon Wheels, rice cereal, or even oatmeal. Nope. My babies eat anything they can get their hands on.
This includes (but is not limited to):
carpet fibers
plastic food wrappers
baby blocks
June bugs
June bugs, you ask? Yes. Apparently, they are all the rage among the 10 month old set!
This past weekend, we spent two nights at Nana's. We had lots of fun activities, including our first bout with a major virus. On Saturday morning, we were hanging out and enjoying the fact that we weren't ill for the moment, when I noticed that I did not see Gracie in the general vicinity. Now, this does not normally worry me immediately. Gracie is a very fast crawler and likes to find places to hide.
So, I called out her name and there was no response. I got up from my chair and found Luke trying to push his way past the Baby Dam into the kitchen. No sign of Gracie.
I looked down the hallway, thinking perhaps she was going for the long distance medal. Nope, no Gracie.
It was then that I saw my tiny sprite sitting on her knees by the screen door. She looked intent upon something, but I was not immediately suspicious. That is, until I noticed that her jaw was moving as if she were eating something.
I headed over, ready to swipe my finger through her mouth to pull out whatever paper or carpet fiber she had shoved into her mouth when I noticed a slimy June Bug carcass on the floor in front of her. Now, the June Bug was not new. I saw it when we came through the door the day before. I remember thinking that I should pick the thing up and throw it away. Right. I thought that. I did not do it.
Just as I was about ask Gracie what she had in her mouth, she opened her mouth and spat out the insides of the empty June Bug shell.
Now, I am sure you have several questions, among them being:
Yuck! Didn't she know it was a bug? Um, right. She's 10 months old. Everything is food to her.
Eek! What do June Bug insides look like? Well, they are hard to describe. The best I can do is refer you to those Polynesian noodles. You know, the clear ones.
Yikes! Did you clean her mouth out with bleach??!!! I don't think that is really advisable. I'm sure Dr. Anderson would not have appreciated meeting us at the emergency room for bleach in the mouth.
After I calmed down, I picked Gracie up and said, "Gracie, no! Bugs are not for eating!" (Brilliant, I know.) I complained a lot to Nana, the woman I felt was certainly to blame for my baby girl eating a June Bug. I panicked, thinking, "Holy cow. That thing was dead. What if it died from the horse fly killing pesticide Nana uses!?!?!"
Nana, of course, thought this was all hysterical and tried to calm me down by saying that the June Bug was dead because it did a kamikaze type dive into the screen door. She was just saying that to avoid the blame for letting her granddaughter die from June Bug venom. (Okay. That was an exaggeration.)
Daddy tried to calm me down by saying that people all over the world eat bugs every day. Right, Daddy! They aren't my baby girl!
Then, Daddy tried to say that I would pass out if I knew all the things he ate when he was a little boy. He even listed some of them. Gross! I SO did not need to hear that list.
In the end, I swiped Gracie's mouth to make sure that there wasn't antennae or something like that in her mouth, cleaned her up with a wipie, and made her drink some Pedialyte. I know, so anticlimactic. But what else would you have me do?
The good news is that Gracie is still alive. No rashes, strange things growing from her head, or anything like that. She lives to eat something else she isn't supposed to sometime soon.
That is if I let her out of my sight!
Too funny! We used to call my oldest diaghter our little bugeta, because she loved to eat dead flies. I was a vacuuming maniac for a few short weeks until she grew out of eating things off the floor.
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