Like the subtle infiltration of Spring that has settled in all around us, Reid's sixth tooth appeared one afternoon. Breaking through on the bottom, it left us stunned, having fairly comported our life around the five-tooth format. His mouth looks like this:
__UU__
VVVVVV

The top two are long and thick, and well spaced, which bodes ill for his orthodontic future, methinks. On the bottom, the center pair are pretty long, having been around a while. Reid has been using them for a while for one of his most enjoyable (and slobbery) games, known around the house as "Hold Something In My Mouth While Drooling Immensely and Thrusting My Chin Out Proudly" or HSIMMWDITMCOP for short. He has also begun using the whole set for carefully biting through a Cheerio just before accidentally adhering both halves to his cheek with spit.

Speaking of Cheerios, Reid's eating has been making outstanding progress. In addition to a wide repertoire of pureed fruit and vegetables from jars, he eats Cheerios, very small pieces of bread, peas, frozen chunks of butternut squash and sweet potato and rice cakes. Rice cakes, incidentally, still taste terrible, and though they are available in a wide variety of flavors, we are currently purchasing only one for Reid. The flavor, which was previously known as "plain" is now called "salt free." In fact, the only ingredient in the "salt-free" rice cakes is rice. Therefore, calling them "salt-free" is just as legitimate as calling them "beef-free" or "squid-free."

Anyhow, Reid's eating method is interesting, because he has a definite grasp (haha) of the critical developmental milestone of exercising his fingers in a pincer motion. He spies a Cheerio on the unprotected battlefield of his Chicco Mamma high chair and his left hand (which we suspect will be the dominant one) creeps up on it, index finger extended. The pointer lands on the Cheerio ("Death from above! Airborne!") and closes to the rest of the hand in a deadly pincer grasp. Now the Cheerio is somewhere in his little, spitty fist.

Things are spotty from here on in. Sometimes, the target Cheerio was too close to his oatey companions, and all of them are swept up in the raid. This is bad for two reasons: 1) the non-target Cheerios are more likely to end up stuck in a salivary prison somewhere on Reid's face, and 2) there is a slightly increased chance of a choking hazard if he gets a half-dozen Cheerios in his mouth at once and they decide to team up against their oppressor. Frequently, Reid teaches them a lesson with the medieval torture chamber known as "The Six Teeth of Doom." Other times, he eats them without a blink. Still other times, they somehow escape his mouth (this happens quite frequently, actually) and they hide in his clothing and bib. We are frequently amazed at how much food has missed his mouth, face and even the bib, only to nestle in the chair, clothes and limbs of our son.

Of course, the Cheerios think they've escaped, but they don't realize (and yes, I recognize that I am anthropomorphisizing breakfast food) until it's too late how we keep Reid's world so clean. Our cocker spaniel reaps a long-overdue reward earned from months of neglect as the humans she previously considered hers doted on this little shouting creature: whatever survives this gauntlet is sent groundward, and the dog makes short work of it, Cheerios, bananas, peas and everything else.