Licking Rocks

Aaaaand here is where everyone gets to feel like a way better mom. At least a way better mom than me.

My two oldest girls are what I call mouth-smart. They have always had a sense of what is too big to swallow, or what would be unpleasant to swallow. Because of this I have yet to go through any choking scares with my kids. I have been privy to choking scares with other peoples kids... and it was usually involving plain old food, bread and the like. Because of my girls being mouth-smart I have been way more relaxed about some pretty big mommy no-no's. Like pop corn. Never had a kid choke on popcorn... and I know that you are not supposed to give it to babies, yet you will find us picking the hulls off of popcorn pieces and giving it to anyone with more than one tooth in their head.

I'm not 100% brain dead about it, like I don't allow stuff of any sort in a mouth when a kid is laying down... that's just plain stupid even for adults. One day we went to a friends house that was fabulously un-baby-proofed when the Bird was around a year old... unbeknownst to us Birdie immediately found the button box. She was running around with that funny face, so I stopped her and requested she "spit it out." It was almost never a fight to get her to spit stuff out because there was every chance that I would inspect the item and give it back. In front of our hosts she proceeded to spit out thirteen buttons and one penny. Alright, no... she did not get any of those back. Buttons, rubber balls, marbles, coins... I'm not a complete dolt here. But... ummm rocks?

Yeah... ever since a kid was mobile to the point of walking steadily and competently (relatively)... for Birdie around eleven months and for LaLa it was about fourteen, I have let them put rocks in their mouths. Hey now! It's not that I encourage this kinda crap, but when you are outside for a few hours each day I defy you to stop it. Especially with the Chaos Girls! Seriously, my thinking was that I could follow these kids around no-no-ing them and rock removing all day and I would at the end of the day be worn to a frazzle and they would have sampled the crud off of maybe thirty seven rocks. On the other hand if I allowed them to continue with the three small pebbles in their mouths currently, they would happily suck away and in the end sample the crud off of less than a dozen rocks. A few pebbles may have been swallowed and processed, but no harm no foul.

As I said, so far my older kids are mouth smart... I will be closely watching Pearl when the time comes and I make no assumptions regarding her skilz. I just think that you should know that I think it's funny the other day when I heard Birdie explain in all sincerity about rocks to LaLa.

Birdie is holding a smooth grey river stone from our front strip. The stone is oblong and about the size of her palm extended. LaLa inspects the rock and reaches for it.

"Nooo, La! This is a special rock!" Birdie tells her.

LaLa looks at her older sister quizzically

"See? It's a licking-rock," She tells LaLa as she puts one end of the rock in her mouth.

Chaos and "licking-rocks," these things are the warp of my day. Trying to reason with the unreasonable? That is the woof. Such is the fabric of my life right now.