Tasting the Outdoors

Today was Harper's third attempt at playing outside. The first attempt ended in tears, the second attempt started in tears, and today there was actual playing. Joe and I have really been looking forward to family camping trips this summer, so I was starting to be concerned that our daughter couldn't be outside without being terrified (unless she was in a stroller or backpack). Today was definitely an improvement, but now I have a new concern: that my daughter cannot be outside without trying to eat everything.

"Mom brought toys out for me but I found this!"

I know that all little kids want to put things in their mouths. But I also know that Harper seems to feel this compulsion more than others. A friend of ours babysat Harper once and said, "She was doing pushups so that she could get the doorstops in her mouth."

"Yeah?" I said, thinking of the time when we visited them and she actually managed to remove their doorstop from the wall before I could stop her. "Isn't that normal?"

She gave me a funny look and said, "Ah, no." Apparently my friend's daughter never once tried to eat their doorstops or was so infatuated she removed them from the walls.

"Hmm," I said, thinking of our drawer full of doorstops at home where I've stashed them after finally giving up about putting them back on.

Can you see the spec she's trying to reach? Me either.

Harper has an uncanny ability to scan the floor, see the most minute spec of a crumb, and make a beeline for it at top crawling speed. Every once in awhile she's deceived by the grain of the wood floor, but most of the time she's in crumb heaven, trying desperately to get whatever it is into her mouth before I can stop her. Luckily she's not as good at getting it into her mouth as she is at spotting it from a mile away.

Still working toward the spec...

This was annoying enough in our kitchen, but outside it's another story. Once she was comfortable enough on the deck to crawl around she immediately found a leaf. Then a rock. Then a seed. Then a turd (where this came from I have no idea, since we do not have dogs). Suddenly I saw the deck as she did, and realized it was a minefield of things that should not go in her mouth.


And so the question is, of course, where do I draw the line? I can only say, "No, that's yucky" or "No, the turd is not a toy" so many times. At some point I'm going to have to let her play and figure it out, right? Obviously not in the case of the turd, but what about the leaf? The seed? I can wash the deck, but what about the spec of who knows what that she dug out of the crack between the boards? And what about on the much-longed for camping trip, where there will be no option to wash the outdoors before releasing her into the wild?

"Hey, I can stand all by myself! Now where's that leaf..."

I'm actually pretty realistic on the fact that there are some things you cannot win (if you recall, in a previous post I told you about how I let her lick the airport furniture). But it's hard to watch your kid dig gunk out of a crevice and then eat it. Sigh. When she's able to walk and is no longer face level with all these things the temptation won't be as bad, right? She won't want to pick up the turd and eat it? Right?!?

"What? So I like things in my mouth. So what?"

By the way, the Indian Gulch fire is finally contained. Last weekend the fire was out of view of Golden, which combined with several new fires threatening homes south of Denver meant that the Indian Gulch fire was out of people minds and out of the news. It was actually hard to find a status report on the Indian Gulch fire, even though they continued to fight it through the weekend. As far as I know, no homes were damaged and no one was injured.