The clink of fork against tooth

That little girl, at 14 months old, has a couple of teeth to show for herself. You can see that she put them to good use given that piece of bagel she had bitten off and is on the right side of her tongue. Normally, she would prefer if we didn't pull her lips back to see her teeth, but when I asked her this day if I could look at her teeth, she willingly came over and offered up her face.

I can't help but be in love with those 2 crooked bottom teeth. They make a little carat sign ^. How adorable is that? You can't see it from this photo, but she also has one of her front teeth, on the right side, and it's looking like she will have a match to that one any minute now.

(I love how she has her hand on top of mine as I pull her lip downand Lise snaps the picture. Her hands are a perfect replica of mine in miniature. It is that feeling, that connection of like/like that makes me feel like a mother.)

She's working hard on using these new teeth to take bites from bagels and other food she normally had to suck on until it was soft. Take note of her excitement at using these new teeth. She took Mommy's fork at breakfast the other day, and used it to spear bites of pancakes and shuttle them to her teeth.

She's definitely a bread girl, so pancakes are right up her alley. Thank goodness for coconut oil and rice milk, that she may experience the joy that is Sunday morning breakfast in our house.

She's gotten quite adept at wielding utensils. I like to think it's all the practice she's had unloading the dishwasher. Her "job" is to take the utensils out and hand them to me, one by one. This is not because I make her do it.

One of my morning jobs is unloading the dishwasher, and she is very clear that she would like to be doing everything that we do. So she enlisted herself as the utensil specialist. She's stellar at it, too. Her favorite utensil is the butter knife, of course. It's easy to wield and it makes a really excellent noise if you tap it on the inside of the dishwasher. Besides, you can carry fistfuls of them at a time, once you've mastered the ability to pick up more than one at a time. (I have a photo of this, but I just can't seem to find it.)

I am grateful for breakfast at the table, for a motivated child, for familial connectedness, for beautiful blue eyes, and for the joy of discovering new things every single day.