Today Ingrid understood how spoons work, I think.

She’s been playing with spoons since she started eating solids but would rarely use them for eating – it was up to me to get the food to her mouth. She got a little cutlery set as well as a silver spoon for her first birthday and has been practicing a lot more since then.

The big challenge was gravity. A spoon fits much better in the mouth when it is upside down (try it!), with the concave side touching the tongue. So inevitably the spoon in Ingrid’s hand would turn upside down at some point on its way from bowl to mouth, which led to much food dripping onto her bib.

The other difficulty was understanding how food gets onto the spoon. She would dip the spoon upright in the food – peck, peck, peck – and lick off the little that stuck to it. Or she’d wait for me to put food on the spoon, and then take the spoon to her mouth, and then put the spoon back in the bowl and look expectantly at me.

But today for the first time I saw her try to scoop up food with the spoon, and then guide the spoon to the mouth without turning it. I think it’s clicked for her. It’s fun to see this kind of thing happen!