Forensic Babies

Avery – with attitude – and her cousin, Travis

Avery will be one year old on September 14. She has no desire to walk because everything she needs is on the floor. The family/living room is located next to the back deck that blows lots of little goodies onto the floor every time somebody opens the door. 

With a mom, a dad, and two siblings (not to mention other family members, like me – her grandma) who frequently open that door, Avery has her pick from all kinds of lint, crumbs, and anything else that lands on the floor, including the fly that she tried to catch yesterday. You can just imagine what a delight that shiny wooden floor is to a baby who has to taste EVERYTHING.

From her vantage point, I discovered what the family had for lunch the day before, because one small hard macaroni shell, hidden from my view, didn't escape Avery's watchful eye. She immediately plunged it into her mouth, and I immediately grabbed it from her.

The tiniest speck of a leaf the vacuum missed found its way into her mouth too. As a matter of fact, my fingers spent most of the morning in Avery's mouth.

After tiring of running after her, I asked her if she wanted to go outside. Whereas the month before she was perfectly content to sit on my lap, yesterday she wanted DOWN. As I scanned the deck, I saw that I would have to lung for all the leaves I found there. 

I missed one. Avery saw it. She looked back at me to determine how fast I might be able to get to her before she shoved it into her mouth – the whole leaf. I jumped off the chair. She crawled as fast as her knees would carry her. I grabbed her and pulled the leaf from her mouth.

And she SCREAMED at me! She has never screamed at me. But she became even more enraged when I laughed at her for screaming at me. So I brought her into the house and decided that if she was hungry enough to eat a leaf, she must be hungry enough to eat the baby food she earlier refused to eat.

She glared at me, defiant. She was NOT going to have that baby food! She wanted raw vegetation! And she screamed at me again.

Soooo, I put her in her crib, handed her a bottle of soy milk (she's lactose intolerant) and told her that when she calmed down I would come back to get her. She grabbed the bottle from my hand, put it into her mouth, and I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. 

Minutes later she was standing in her crib, singing. I opened the door and she smiled at me. All was forgiven and we went back to the room where I discovered even more lint that I had missed before.

So now I'm thinking, because I'm such an NCIS and Criminal Minds fan, why investigators don't use babies to find evidence. They are so good at noticing things we adults miss. Maybe I'll start my own show – Forensic Babies!

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