So, your child is all of a sudden interested in using a spoon (or a fork I guess, but for the sake of this post, we’re going with spoon). You think to yourself, “Oh, ok! Fun! A new milestone!” And then you give him a spoon so he can try to eat yogurt or oatmeal or whatever. You expect it to be a mess. You’re okay with it because, bless his little heart, he’s growing up to be so big. You take pictures of him. You laugh at how hard he’s trying. It’s even a little cute when he gets frustrated and slings the food everywhere. Or when he lifts the spoon to his mouth and everything plops onto the floor. You don’t reach for the paper towels right away. No way. Because you’re child is exploring. You want to be a good mom so you tell yourself he needs to be able to explore.
Well then it’s the fourth day in a row of this business, and by then it’s like “C’mon, little Johnny, haven’t you figured this out yet? Lean your head over the bowl! Don’t try and get too much in your mouth, and for heaven’s sake WATCH WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”
Watching him eat yogurt isn’t fun anymore. You’re tired of wiping it off his clothes, the table, the chairs, the floor. And little dude is finding all kinds of new ways to explore, and it’s pissing you right off. You stop buying yogurt in the cups and start buying yogurt in the pouches instead because maybe that will give you a break. Ya hear me?
Well, I think some genius out there may have just solved this problem. I mean, look at this spoon! It’s a little weird lookin’, right?
Now if you’re as particular as I am, your first thought might be, “But wait, that won’t fit in line with the other spoons.”
I know, I know. But’s it’s gonna be okay. Because it works. IT WORKS, I TELL YOU!
Their little toddler hands fit right into that groovy handle in the way that they naturally hold a spoon. I made my 3 year old try it out, because I’ll tell you this right now. He kinda sucks at using a spoon. He has like a 65% success rate of getting all the food in his mouth. But look! He’s killin’ it.
Let me just say real fast, I know that black beans are, like, the ugliest food to take pictures of, but I didn’t think of that until after. Plus the yogurt in the fridge had expired, sooooo there’s that.
Now you’re next question might be: “What’s that he’s eating out of?”
So this is ANOTHER thing. It may be a little hard to tell but this bowl comes to a point in the middle. I think it’s more aimed at younger toddlers who are just starting to use bowls, so I really bought it for our babe when he’s a little older. But it is supposed to help by allowing them to pull the food up on the sides, or something like that. Anyway, it totally worked and it was great. It also comes with these starter spoons for the younger ones.
The box for the spoons said 6m+, which seems a little early, but one of NumNum’s missions is to help moms help their babies self-feed. Giving it to our nine month old, I thought it would be a lost cause. But we gave it a whirl, and holy moly, I couldn’t believe it. He was all about it.
It took him a little bit of trial and error (and some intervening on my part) before he realized which side he was supposed to put in his mouth. But once he did, he rocked it. I just dipped the spoon-thingy in some pureed food and handed it to him. You’ll notice that one spoon has this rubbery stuff in the middle, and one doesn’t. I’m guessing the one that doesn’t is so they can smash the food in there. But we only tried out this one. He also loved it because he’s teething something pretty serious right now and it had to have felt good to chew on the rubber. Obviously, this isn’t going to be mess free. But it’s okay. He’s EXPLORING.
It’s funny how these are the things that bring us joy, right? Spoons and bowls that cause less mess, and baby spoons that get them started a little earlier (I mean, we want them to have the best future possible, don’t we?). But the way I see it, if having a spoon that keeps your toddler from slinging food everywhere makes you happy…if it allows you to stand still and drink your coffee (or martini, whatever, I don’t judge) for just a few extra seconds then you deserve that. Because hey…
Ur a Mom Now.
Note: If you found this helpful, you can find all of these things on Amazon. A link to the Kizingo toddler spoon is here. A link to the numnum bowl is here. And a link to the numnum spoons is here. You can also save a little money and buy the numnum bowl and spoons together here.