Image Credit: PEXELS.com/mathewcoulton

Once, my son stuck his toothbrush into the cat’s rear end and then, you guessed it, straight into his mouth.

Yuck, yuck yuckity yuck. I snatched the toothbrush and tossed it in the garbage, but the aftertaste of that disgusting incident lingered.

Babies and toddlers are incredibly… adventurous about putting things in their mouths, and our job as parents gets increasingly difficult the more mobile they become. I remember a fellow mom telling me I would mourn the pre-crawling days when I could put my baby on a clean blanket with a handpicked selection of child-approved toys around him. Once he started snacking on bits of lint and mystery items on the floor, I started to see her point. It was like having a little human Roomba.

Daily, I find myself redirecting my toddler from ingesting disgusting, poisonous or downright valuable items: money, shampoo, the pee-pee in his potty, or old milk jugs found in the recycling bin. It’s a near-constant effort to keep him from killing himself.

The task is second-nature nowadays, and when he does manage to get something less than ideal into his mouth, I don’t panic like I used to. “We don’t eat: insert latest inedible object here,” has become a well-used phrase in our house. Sometimes, it feels like we are hosting an alien lifeform unaccustomed to the ways of our planet.

All babies put things in their mouths, and the act is completely developmentally appropriate. They usually start “mouthing” around four months of age, and really get into it at six months. Most slow down around two and stop altogether by three. My son’s mouthing drove me crazy at first, especially in the post-covid germaphobic world he was born into. He was always putting other kids’ slobbery toys in his mouth or finding unsanitary things to gnaw on. I eventually made peace with it, prevented as much of it as I reasonably could, and reminded myself that it was “just a phase.”

Despite my best efforts, my son managed to get all kinds of weird and unexpected objects into his mouth before I could intercept him. Some — by no means all — of those objects are listed below.

Super fun things my son has put in his mouth:

• Dog and cat kibbles
• Rocks — plural (one just isn’t enough, babies always seem to think the next one will taste different… and maybe it does. I wouldn’t know, I don’t eat rocks.)
• Other kids’ water bottles
• The shopping cart handle
• A toothbrush that has been shoved down the drain hole
• His dirt-covered toes
• His shoes after walking around the grocery store
• The baby-proof outlet covers he pulls off the walls (they may prevent electrocution if your toddler doesn’t choke on them first)
• Moist cat and dog toys
• Books, magazines, mail, receipts
• Credit cards
• A cherry pit (more on that in this story)
• Sand
• Dirt
• The leaf on my jade plant
• Bathwater (including his own pee)
• A clipped toenail
• Old cheerios found in the car seat
• The cat’s tail
• Car keys
• My phone
• Armrest of a chair at the hospital
• My new hand lotion
• Salt and pepper shakers at the restaurant
• Old sippy cup of milk found in the backseat of the car
• The bathtub drain plug
• A nail
• Dead beetle
• A used bandaid
• The pompoms from the popsicle stick caterpillar he made at playschool

What fun things has your baby or toddler been snacking on?

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.

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