It’s true that Breanna’s taste for food has wildly expanded, going from total disgust over anything that isn’t breastmilk to actually enjoying several foods. I mentioned the things she’s been eating in an update not long ago, but it bears mentioning again that she loves mango and cheese most of all. To add to the list, she also enjoyed hard-boiled egg yolk so much that she actually balled up her little fists and screamed at me in aggravation when it was finished. She also loves rice cakes and god forbid one of us eats a rice cake without sharing.

Even at George’s parents’ house the other day, she actually enjoyed nibbling tiny pieces off a plum that was almost as big as her head.

However, apparently her favorite thing to stick in her mouth besides her own hands and feet is something that is not actually meant to be eaten.

Yesterday afternoon we all went to the park for about an hour. After doing the rounds of the swings, the jungle gym, and the slides, Hayley and George were sitting up in the little house-thing with Hayley alternating between crawling through the tunnel and sliding down the slide. Since I knew Breanna would get bored quickly up there and would spend the rest of our time trying to throw herself down the stairs, I chose to sit in the sand with her. She sat for a full five minutes, very happily lifting up fistfuls of sand, then pouring it onto her own feet. A couple of times she tried to stand up but the uneven terrain made it too complicated so she settled for sitting and occasionally crawling around.

Then, completley out of nowhere, she got up onto her hands and knees, rocked back and forth, then lunged straight forward in a sandy belly flop, mouth wide open. From her prone position, she frantically started licking the sand, almost as though she knew I was going to grab her and ruin all her fun.

I scraped my fingernails along her tongue, pulling out as much sand as I could and tried to wash her mouth out with some of Hayley’s juice. I even wiped her lips and tongue with the edge of my shirt in an effort to clean her out.

No more than three minutes later, she was face down, licking the sand again. Clearly it’s her favorite item on the menu of things that can fit into her mouth. Delicious and full of fiber (and I try to avoid thinking what else it might be full of because I can’t disinfect her mouth with bleach anyway), yum yum!

Next time we go to the park I’m taking a bowl of Cheerios with me and when I see her arms spread out for her next swan dive into the sand, I’m going to shove the bowl in front of her so that at least she ends up with actual food in her mouth.

Contained in a swing, far from the sand:

Contained in the stroller with Hayley pushing: