Personality
The 10-month old is turning into a little hambone. It seems like eight to 10 months is the time kids (well, our kids at least, your kids could be weird) start to show their personalities. This baby is no exception.
He loves to snack on that cheerful circle cereal in the yellow box (you know the ones). He will eat his dinner and then my wife will put a handful of the cereal on his highchair tray. He’s very coordinated for a 10-month-old (early signs of a pro athlete? Brain surgeon? Mid-level sales associate who’s good at table tennis? The possibilities are endless) and he will pick up the pieces and shove them in his mouth until he’s full. And that’s where the personality starts.
Because, when he’s done with his snacking, instead of just not eating anymore, he starts picking up any leftover pieces and dropping them over the side of his highchair to the floor. But it’s not just that he’s dropping the food, it’s the way he does it. He will make eye contact, stick out his hand, and then drop it with a defiant look in his eye. He basically “mic drops” his food. If only he could walk off stage afterward…
Actually, the mic drop cereal thing is in keeping with other rockstar behaviors I’ve observed.
When sitting in a shopping cart, stroller, or car seat if he feels like he’s being ignored he will direct your attention back to him in a very rockstar way: by screaming. And it’s not a baby cry scream, but the sound I imagine Freddie Mercury would have made if he struck his thumb with a hammer.
But my favorite rockstar personality trait is the head banging. For those of you familiar with this column and my other children, I said head banging, not head butting. Hopefully we’re done with that.
This is a less destructive habit. He will crawl, pause, and then tilt his head to the side and shake his head back and forth like he’s rocking out. He often laughs while doing this (which he got from me, because I have laughed every single time he does it). The older boys have taken to calling this, “doing the head thing.” I’ll be driving the family somewhere and I’ll hear the boys in the third row start cracking up because they face the baby in the second row and, “he’s doing the head thing, Dad!”
It’s fun as a parent to see your kids’ personality develop. It’s also interesting to see what facets of their personalities are shared by the other kids and which ones are their own. Or completely their mom’s fault. I’m blaming that mic drop thing on her.
When my wife read this, she pointed out that the baby drops his cereal on the floor knowing full-well he’s going to get taken out of the high chair and as soon as he's down he starts scavenging for cereal that he can eat off the floor. I think her point was he’s not doing a dramatic mic drop so much as he’s executing a diabolical plan to be let free from the high-chair and also eat cereal off the floor.
Dang. I guess I’ll have to take the blame on this one.