The Throwing Phase, Take 2000!

Now this was one I thought we'd grown out of. Giving Baby Bean free reign with all sorts of potential-for-creating-havoc foods was always one of my least favourite parts of BLW, but after the first few months I thought we'd cracked Bean's desire to throw.

And then we clearly hadn't!

And then I thought we had.

But no, it would appear not......and so on!

So far we've had the following Throwing Phases:

1) The not-really-able-to-grasp-so-dropping-accidently phase
2) The moving-things-around-the-tray-and-pushing-some-off-in-the-process phase
3) The oops-I-dropped-it-but-I-want-to-eat-it phase
4) The oooo-what-happens-when-I-do-this-phase
5) The hold-it-over-the-edge-while-smiling-at-mummy-and-saying-no phase (one of my personal favourites as it was actually quite funny)
6) The sorting-it phase
7) The I-DON'T-WANT-IT phase
8) The I-DON'T-WANT-IT-oh-I-do-want-it-I-DON'T-WANT-IT-oh-I-do-want-it-I-DON'T-WANT-IT....... phase
9) The clearing-the-tray-by-swiping-it phase
10) The moving-it-out-the-way-to-eat-all-the-peas-first phase

But now we have the GRRRRRRR-why-can't-I-pick-it-up-with-this-fork tantrum phase, combined with a rather random careful-picking-up-one-item-in-each-hand-to-drop-them-over-the-side-of-the-highchair phase.

WTF??????

The first phase I can understand. Baby Bean is clearly frustrated, chasing peas and sweetcorn and pasta around her tray with a misbehaving fork. Her fine motor skills are so good when using her hands she just doesn't understand why she can't get the damn fork to make contact with the thing she's aiming it at!

But the other phase? The one that's just appeared these last few days? What's that all about? If I grab her hands she looks up at me, calm as anything, and goes right back to eating. Sometimes she'll look over the side and go "Oh no!!!!" But usually her picking and dropping gets faster and faster and the only recourse I have is to remove all the food faster than she can.

I do have some theories - it's a new way to announce she's full and/or bored, or maybe it's linked to frustration and she simply "dumps" it all when it doesn't do what she wants, or perhaps it's a return to sorting and trajectory experiments. But given that we'd made some major headway on Bean eating from a bowl or plate, rather than just a tray, and on eating well before simply handing the remainder to me and signing she was full, this feels like a bit of a step backwards. We're once again having to limit how much we give her at a time or it starts flying off into the curtains (usually with a pretty impressive backspin on it), and we're once again having to gently remind her that food doesn't live on the floor.

I wonder if there is ever really an end to the Throwing Phase? I tell myself that it's not like she'll be an adult who's incapable of eating a meal without some of it heading south. And then my pasta falls off my fork on its precarious path to my mouth and hits the floor with a splat.

Ah! Oh well!