We had given Gwen the opportunity to play with a spoon and bowl with a little food in it only a couple of times before. She didn't have very good control and really wasn't interested in doing much more than chewing on the spoon and finger-painting with whatever made it onto her highchair tray. At the time she clearly wasn't ready, so we put the idea on the back shelf for a while.
A few weeks ago Gwen stopped eating any kind of food for us (besides a bottle). No matter what I tried she wouldn't take food off a spoon, complete with flailing arms, tight lips, and violent shaking head protests. She generally goes through an "I'm not going to eat" phase when she's cutting a tooth but this was going on for a few weeks and I just couldn't figure it out. So I thought we'd give the "self-feeding" thing another go, immediately followed by a bath. Here are the highlights:
Act I
Act II - Clearly a much messier experience
The sweet potato aftermath:
Awesome!
By the way - It turns out Gwen wasn't getting just one tooth, but more like seven; about a week ago she was in to the doctor for a virus and he informed me that she had her next two top incisors, as well as two or three molars, and her canines, all coming down at once. No wonder she wouldn't eat. We're still letting her toy around with feeding herself, but only on bath night! :-)